ACORN fraud map

From Rotten acorn, a map detailing widespread ACORN fraud:


Details, state by state:

AR
1998 - A contractor with ACORN-affiliated Project Vote was arrested for falsifying about 400 voter registration cards.

CO
2004 - An ACORN employee admitted to forging signatures and registering three of her friends to vote 40 times.

CO
2005 - Two ex-ACORN employees were convicted in Denver of perjury for submitting false voter registrations.

FL
2004 - A Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesman said ACORN was “singled out” among suspected voter registration groups for a 2004 wage initiative because it was “the common thread” in the agency’s fraud investigations.

MI
2004 - The Detroit Free Press reported that “overzealous or unscrupulous campaign workers in several Michigan counties are under investigation for voter-registration fraud, suspected of attempting to register nonexistent people or forging applications for already-registered voters.” ACORN-affiliate Project Vote was one of two groups suspected of turning in the documents.

MO
2003 - Of 5,379 voter registration cards ACORN submitted in St. Louis, only 2,013 of those appeared to be valid. At least 1,000 are believed to be attempts to register voters illegally.

NC
2004 - North Carolina officials investigated ACORN for submitting fake voter registration cards.

NM
2005
Four ACORN employees submitted as many as 3,000 potentially fraudulent signatures on the group’s Albuquerque ballot initiative. A local sheriff added: “It’s safe to say the forgery was widespread.”

NM
2004 - An ACORN employee registered a 13-year-old boy to vote. Citing this and other examples, New Mexico State Representative Joe Thompson stated that ACORN was “manufacturing voters” throughout New Mexico.

OH
2004 - A grand jury indicted a Columbus ACORN worker for submitting a false signature and false voter registration form. In Franklin County, two ACORN workers submitted what the director of the board of election supervisors called “blatantly false” forms. In Cuyahoga County, ACORN and its affiliate Project Vote submitted registration cards that had the highest rate of errors for any voter registration group.

MN
2004 - During a traffic stop, police found more than 300 voter registration cards in the trunk of a former ACORN employee, who had violated a legal requirements that registration cards be submitted to the Secretary of State within 10 days of being filled out and signed.

PA
2004 - Reading’s Director of Elections received calls from numerous individuals complaining that ACORN employees deliberately put inaccurate information on their voter registration forms. The Berks County director of elections said voter fraud was “absolutely out of hand,” and added: “Not only do we have unintentional duplication of voter registration but we have blatant duplicate voter registrations.” The Berks County deputy director of elections added that ACORN was under investigation by the Department of Justice.

TX
2004 - ACORN turned in the voter registration form of David Young, who told reporters “The signature is not my signature. It’s not even close.” His social security number and date of birth were also incorrect.

VA
2005 - In 2005, the Virginia State Board of Elections admonished Project Vote and ACORN for turning in a significant number of faulty voter registrations. An audit revealed that 83% of sampled registrations that were rejected for carrying false or questionable information were submitted by Project Vote. Many of these registrations carried social security numbers that exist for other people, listed non-existent or commercial addresses, or were for convicted felons in violation of state and federal election law.
In a letter to ACORN, the State Board of Elections reported that 56% of the voter registration applications ACORN turned in were ineligible. Further, a full 35% were not submitted in a timely manner, as required by law. The State Board of Elections also commented on what appeared to be evidence of intentional voter fraud. "Additionally,” they wrote, “information appears to have been altered on some applications where information given by the applicant in one color ink has been scratched through and re-entered in another color ink. Any alteration of a voter registration application is a Class 5 Felony in accordance with § 24.2-1009 of the Code of Virginia."

WI
2004 - The district attorney’s office investigated seven voter registration applications Project Vote employees filed in the names of people who said the group never contacted them. Former Project Vote employee Robert Marquise Blakely told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he had not met with any of the people whose voter registration applications he signed, “an apparent violation of state law,” according to the paper.

Is ACORN stealing the election

Rhetorical question, I know. The blogosphere is abuzz with questions about ACORN, Obama's old employer and extreme left-wing radical vote-getting group.

One of the most succinct is at IBDEditorials.com:

Is ACORN Stealing The Election?
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Wednesday, October 08, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election Fraud: A radical group Barack Obama used to work for is committing voter-registration fraud in several states, ahead of the election. What does Obama know about this scam?

It's a legitimate question to raise now that the FBI has raided the offices of the nonprofit Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in Nevada and North Carolina, two states where Obama and John McCain are running neck-and-neck. ACORN has registered bogus voters in both states.

The group's voter-registration fraud is rampant, and authorities plan a nationwide sweep of ACORN offices to collect records.

In Nevada, state officials say the fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team, including quarterback Tony Romo.

"Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada," Secretary of State Ross Miller said, "and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4."

While those names will be flagged on Election Day, felonious voters may have better luck using other cutouts. Nevada, along with several other key battleground states, requires no ID to vote.

In North Carolina, where Obama has been running nonstop ads, ACORN has registered a record number of new voters, many of them suspicious. Statewide, Democrats are doing better than the GOP in new converts — even in traditionally Republican counties.

There have been 218,749 newly registered Democrats in North Carolina since January — more than five times the 38,337 new Republicans, state records show.

The numbers show a startlingly close political battle even in Republican-dominated Union County, with 4,233 new voters registering as Democrats and 4,362 as Republicans. In previous election years, new Republicans have outnumbered Democrats 2-to-1 in the fast-growing Charlotte-area county.

In Missouri, one ACORN registrant named Monica Rays showed up on no less than eight forms, all bearing the same signature.

Suspicious election officials sent letters to some 5,000 ACORN registrants in St. Louis, asking the letter recipients to contact them.

Fewer than 40 reponded.

In Kansas City, 15,000 registrations have been questioned, and last year four ACORN employees were indicted for fraud.

In addition, ACORN officials have also been indicted in Wisconsin and Colorado. Investigations against others are active in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

ACORN has also been registering convicted felons — including inmates — in Florida and other battleground states. ACORN boasts registering a record 1.5 million new voters so far this election.

What does all this have to do with Obama, besides the fact that he'd be the beneficiary of most, if not all, of these new votes?

For starters, Obama paid ACORN, which has endorsed him for president, $800,000 to register new voters, payments his campaign failed to accurately report. (They were disguised in his FEC disclosure as payments to a front group called Citizen Services Inc. for "advance work.")

What's more, Obama worked as executive director of ACORN's voter-registration arm, Project Vote, in 1992. Joined by two other community organizers on Chicago's South Side, Obama conducted the voter-registration drive that helped elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the Senate that year.

The next year, 1993, Obama joined the civil-rights law firm Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, where he sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to implement the federal "Motor Voter" law, which the GOP governor at the time refused to do. Then-Gov. Jim Edgar argued, presciently, that the Clinton law would invite voter fraud.

Obama downplays his ties to ACORN, and his campaign denies coordinating with ACORN to register voters.

Meantime, New Orleans-based ACORN maintains that it has no control over volunteers who are falsifying application forms, that they're like employees who steal from the store.

But the fraud is widespread and not isolated. It also turns out that some ACORN execs allegedly are involved in a $1 million embezzlement cover-up at their headquarters. Representing them in the case is none other than Michelle Obama's old law firm in Chicago.

ACORN's corruption is not just out in the field, as they claim. There's a pattern of corruption from the top down.

McCain would be wise to start preparing a challenge to voter registration rolls should he lose the race in a close contest. He'd be crazy not to contest the results in light of these events.

There are posts today at Michelle Malkin detailing loads of ACORN badness as well.

Why isn't the DOJ going after these guys? Could this be Clintons' October surprise? Let us hope.

EXIT QUESTION: If the Obamessiah wins the election, and Juan McAmnesty is too afraid of being called racist to challenge him: When was the last time a sitting President was indicted for fraud? We would have to act fast before the libtards completely wipe out any oversight of the election.

UPDATE: Greta Van Sustern on Fox News interviewed Ohio's skank Secretary of State tonight. Of course Jennifer Brunner (D) denied any wrongdoing. Figures.

ACORN = Voter fraud, again and again

Since the election is happening this week, we're focusing on Connecting the Dots on voter registration fraud.

Yet another post on ACORN from EPIonline:

ACORN’s Voter Fraud in Ohio is Part of Larger Pattern

New report shows ACORN has been linked to voter fraud in 12 states including Ohio 8/11/06,

Washington, DC –ACORN’s recent run-in with the Franklin County elections board for allegedly turning in falsified voter registration cards is only the latest in a long-standing pattern of dubious elections practices. ACORN employees have been accused of submitting bogus voter registration cards and forging signatures on ballot initiatives in 12 states since 2004.

In addition to Ohio, ACORN employees have been accused of illegal elections practices in New Mexico, Florida, Colorado, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia among others. Here are just a few examples of ACORN’s pattern and practice of fraud associated with their campaigns:

Florida—When ACORN led a ballot initiative to raise Florida’s minimum wage in 2004, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesman said ACORN was “singled out” among suspected voter registration groups because it was “the common thread” in the agency’s investigations from one end of the state to the other. One blatant example of voter fraud includes registering 68-year-old Charles Shuh, a former Democratic mayor of St. Petersburg, as a 30-year-old female Republican.

New Mexico—In an effort to put a wage initiative on the ballot in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2005 ACORN employees forged thousands of fraudulent signatures. Following their voter registration drive in 2004, a state Representative stated that ACORN was “manufacturing voters” throughout New Mexico.

Ohio—This is not the first time ACORN has been accused of shady practices in Ohio. In Cuyahoga County in 2004, ACORN and its affiliate Project Vote submitted registration cards that had the highest rate of errors for any voter registration group.

“Once again ACORN is using any means necessary to fool the public into supporting its radical political agenda,” said Mike Flynn, EPI’s director of legislative affairs. “ACORN’s decades of questionable elections practices and outright deceit extending throughout a dozen states prove this group is more about advancing its political agenda than about helping the community.”

To see an example of the fraudulent signatures ACORN submitted for their ballot initiative to raise Albuquerque’s minimum wage or to read the report “Rotten ACORN: America’s Bad Seed,” go to www.RottenACORN.com.

I saw a news article the other day detailing 10,000 arrests for known felons in a number of states by federal officials. If they have the resources to round these guys up, why don't they focus on important issues like voter fraud. I'm just sayin'...

More ammunition: Obama's responsible for mortgage meltdown

From Stanley Kurtz at the New York Post comes this article detailing Obama's indirect involvement in the mortgage crisis, by way of "Community Organizer" (h/t The Muslim Question). Posted complete so you can read the entire article.

O'S DANGEROUS PALS
BARACK'S 'ORGANIZER' BUDS PUSHED FOR BAD MORTGAGES
By STANLEY KURTZ
Posted: 3:53 am
September 29, 2008

WHAT exactly does a "community organizer" do? Barack Obama's rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here's a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.

In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes - and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.

In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.

THE seeds of today's financial meltdown lie in the Commu nity Reinvestment Act - a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.

CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in "subprime" loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.

Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA - and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN.

In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America's financial institutions.

Banks already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed still further in the wrong direction when government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets.

Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However compassionate the motive, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been financial disaster.

ONE key pioneer of ACORN's subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott - an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae's mortgage policies.

Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in "direct action" - organizers' term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a "living wage" law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.

In February 1990, Illinois regulators held what was believed to be the first-ever state hearing to consider blocking a thrift merger for lack of compliance with CRA. The challenge was filed by ACORN, led by Talbott. Officials of Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, her target, complained that ACORN pressure was undermining its ability to meet strict financial requirements it was obligated to uphold and protested being boxed into an "affirmative-action lending policy." The following years saw Talbott featured in dozens of news stories about pressuring banks into higher-risk minority loans.

IN April 1992, Talbott filed an other precedent-setting com plaint using the "community support requirements" of the 1989 savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first "bank fair" at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial institutions willing to participate.

Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank "summit" in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting - for example, by overlooking bad credit histories.

By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott's program as "affirma- tive-action lending" and ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities.

And Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks "kicking and screaming" into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed - Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were "participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories."

What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae - which had agreed to buy up the loans. "If this pilot program works," crowed Talbott, "it will send a message to the lending community that it's OK to make these kind of loans."

Well, the pilot program "worked," and Fannie Mae's message that risky loans to minorities were "OK" was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history.

IT would be tough to find an "on the ground" community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.

When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.

He returned to Chicago in the early '90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama's legal services for a "motor voter" case and partnered with him on his 1992 "Project VOTE" registration drive.

In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN's up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott's drive against Chicago's banks.

More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago's Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation's board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers - and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.

That committee's report on strategies for funding groups like ACORN features all the key names in Obama's organizer network. The report quotes Talbott more than any other figure; Sandra Maxwell, Talbott's ACORN ally in the bank battle, was also among the organizers consulted.

MORE, the Obama-supervised Woods Fund report ac knowledges the problem of getting donors and foundations to contribute to radical groups like ACORN - whose confrontational tactics often scare off even liberal donors and foundations.

Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public's eye. The Woods Fund's claim to be "nonideological," it says, has "enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government 'establishments' without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship."

Hmm. Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological. Sound familiar?

The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN's Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding for her efforts.

And, as the leader of another charity, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama channeled more funding Talbott's way - ostensibly for education projects but surely supportive of ACORN's overall efforts.

In return, Talbott proudly announced her support of Obama's first campaign for state Senate, saying, "We accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer."

IN short, to understand the roots of the subprime-mortgage crisis, look to ACORN's Madeline Talbott. And to see how Talbott was able to work her mischief, look to Barack Obama.

Then you'll truly know what community organizers do.

Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC.

If you recall, Mr. Kurtz is the journalist who made an appearance on WGN radio in August to discuss the Chicago Annenburg Challenge and obamessiah's connection to william ayers, American Terrorist Extraordinaire.

Putting ACORN in perspective

From the northeast Pennsylvania Times Leader (looks like it was picked up from the AP newswire):

Voter fraud charges still tripping up voting rights group
ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
Associated Press

An advocacy group that registered more than a million voters two years ago is facing new allegations of voter fraud and sloppy work just weeks before crucial midterm elections.

Philadelphia's municipal voter registration office has rejected about 3,000 cards submitted by ACORN - the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - since April because of missing information or invalid addresses.

Denver County election officials forwarded about 200 cards to the secretary of state's office after finding similar handwriting on signatures.

In Ohio, election officials in three of the state's largest counties have cited problems with hundreds of voter registration cards. ACORN is accused of submitting cards with nonexistent addresses, forged signatures and, in one case, for someone who died seven years ago.

"In my opinion, there's a lot of words but little action in terms of fixing the problem," said Matt Damschroder, elections board director in Franklin County, Ohio.

ACORN, which has about 220,000 members nationally, registered 1.2 million people to vote in 2004 and is running voter registration drives in 17 states this year.

The nonprofit group dispatches workers and volunteers to poor neighborhoods, gas stations, courthouses and other places to sign up new voters.

Although it is nonpartisan, ACORN recruits new voters in heavily Democratic poor and minority neighborhoods. The group says those areas are the most underrepresented in the political process. Republicans are among ACORN's loudest critics, while Democrats largely support its work. In July, Hillary Rodham Clinton, a potential 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, addressed the group's national convention in Columbus.

Democrats hope to regain control of the U.S. House and narrow or erase the GOP majority in the Senate on Nov. 7.

ACORN was accused of fraud in 2004 in Ohio, Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina and Virginia, and in 2003 in Missouri.

Prosecution is rare, though, and federal lawsuits against the group were dismissed in Florida. ACORN says it's working to reduce problems, and officials promise to fire any worker found committing fraud.

"We'll continue to personally encourage people to register to vote and exercise their franchise, and we're going to continue to stand up for people's voter rights," said Kevin Whelan, a spokesman for the New Orleans-based group.

Such statements do little to appease critics. Even groups supporting the organization's efforts question why fraud allegations keep cropping up.

"They're sort of their own worst enemy," said Bill Faith, who directs Ohio's largest homeless advocacy group and shares many of ACORN's goals.

"They want low-income people to register to vote but because of the kind of problems that come from their program, it provokes a reaction from the Legislature that actually makes it harder to run such programs," Faith said.

The Denver Election Commission says it's been unsuccessful in working with ACORN to reduce problems with voter registration cards. Colorado officials had investigated similar concerns about the group's registration cards two years ago.

ACORN says it meets regularly with election officials to address concerns.

"We hold our workers to a very high standard, we ensure they make every vote count, and we're going to continue to do that work," said Ben Hanna, head organizer in Colorado.

Ohio prosecutors are looking at almost 400 cards that the Franklin County elections board says included already registered voters or listed the wrong address.

The Franklin elections board is also looking at hundreds of other ACORN cards with alleged irregularities. The Hamilton County board is concerned about errors and missing information on hundreds of ACORN cards, while problems with about a dozen cards were reported in Summit County.

ACORN is continuing its largely successful legal campaign to reduce voting obstacles for the poor.

In September, a federal judge in Ohio threw out a requirement that individuals who register voters - instead of groups - must turn in the completed forms, in a lawsuit brought by ACORN and other voting rights groups.

ACORN won a preliminary victory Thursday in a similar suit against Georgia's voter registration laws. It won a similar case in Washington state this year and in Maryland last year.

What a surprise. Since they back dhimmicrat's agenda, the dems aren't concerned about voter fraud. That's why they want to keep the borders open, letting in a steady stream of illegal replacement voters: to replace the steady stream of black voters they're disenfranchising; and the steady stream of liberal babies they're aborting.

The ACORN Obama knows

From the Jewish World Review, Michelle Malkin covers some of the abuses of ACORN, training ground of none other than the Obamessiah:

Don't bother asking Barack Obama. He cut his ideological teeth working with ACORN as a "community organizer" and legal representative. Naturally, ACORN's political action committee has warmly endorsed his presidential candidacy. ACORN head Maude Hurd gushes that Obama is the candidate who "best understands and can affect change on the issues ACORN cares about" — like ensuring their massive pipeline to your hard-earned money. Let's take a closer look at the ACORN Obama knows.
Last July, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State. Seven ACORN workers had submitted nearly 2,000 bogus voter registration forms. According to case records, they flipped through phone books for names to use on the forms, including "Leon Spinks," "Frekkie Magoal" and "Fruto Boy Crispila." Three ACORN election hoaxers pleaded guilty in October. A King County prosecutor called ACORN's criminal sabotage "an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls."

Read Michelle's entire article here.

See some of my old posts on ACORN, the premiere organization in the US for voter fraud:
http://connectthedots2006.blogspot.com/search?q=ACORN

Read more about the abuses of ACORN at Rotten Acorn.

No big surprise for the most liberal, left-leaning, Marxist candidate. Workers of the world unite!

More on ACORN -- from the 4th Estate

From the Opinion Journal, the WSJ opinion page, comes yet another article about ACORN. Hard to believe they would hold THIS opinion:

The Acorn Indictments
A union-backed outfit faces charges of election fraud.
Friday, November 3, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

So, less than a week before the midterm elections, four workers from Acorn, the liberal activist group that has registered millions of voters, have been indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms to the Kansas City, Missouri, election board. But hey, who needs voter ID laws?

We wish this were an aberration, but allegations of fraud have tainted Acorn voter drives across the country. Acorn workers have been convicted in Wisconsin and Colorado, and investigations are still under way in Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.

The good news for anyone who cares about voter integrity is that the Justice Department finally seems poised to connect these dots instead of dismissing such revelations as the work of a few yahoos. After the federal indictments were handed up in Kansas City this week, the U.S. Attorney's office said in a statement that "This national investigation is very much ongoing."
Let's hope so. Acorn officials bill themselves as nonpartisan community organizers merely interested in giving a voice to minorities and the poor. In reality, Acorn is a union-backed, multimillion-dollar outfit that uses intimidation and other tactics to push for higher minimum wage mandates and to trash Wal-Mart and other non-union companies.

Operating in at least 38 states (as well as Canada and Mexico), Acorn pushes a highly partisan agenda, and its organizers are best understood as shock troops for the AFL-CIO and even the Democratic Party. As part of the Fannie Mae reform bill, House Democrats pushed an "affordable housing trust fund" designed to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits to subsidize Acorn, among other groups. A version of this trust fund actually passed the Republican House and will surely be on the agenda again next year.

Acorn and its affiliates have pulled some real stunts in recent years. In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a Congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained Acorn's practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.
"You have to wonder what's the point of that, if not to overwhelm the system and get phony registrations on the voter rolls," says Thor Hearne of the American Center for Voting Rights, who also testified at the hearing. "These were Democratic officials saying that they felt their election system in Ohio was under assault by these kinds of efforts to game the system."

Given this history, it's not surprising that Acorn is so hostile to voter identification laws and other efforts to ensure fairness and accuracy at the polls. In Missouri last month, the state Supreme Court held that a photo ID requirement to vote was overly burdensome and a violation of the state constitution. Acorn was behind the original suit challenging the statute, and it has brought similar challenges in several other states, including Ohio.

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that blacks today are almost twice as likely as they were in 2004 to say they have little or no confidence in the voting system. Such a finding would seem like a powerful argument for voter ID laws, which consistently poll well among people of all races and incomes and would increase confidence in the voting process. Of course, voter ID laws would also cut down on fraud, which, judging from the latest indictments, would put a real crimp in Acorn's style.

Just so you know who's behind the suit challenging voter photo ID requirements in Ohio.

Time to end the rotten seed: ACORN

From RottenAcorn.com:

ACORN Is A Bad Seed

Something’s rotten in the state of New Mexico, and Ohio, and Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and Florida, and…

ACORN says it is a community group, but it is really a multi-million-dollar, multinational conglomerate. Its political agenda is driven by a relative handful of anti-corporate activists. ACORN spends millions of dollars to promote economic policies (like raising the minimum wage), but has admitted that it doesn't always want to abide by them. ACORN advocates for workers' rights and runs two unions, but has in the past fought its own employees' efforts to form a union.

ACORN's history makes for pretty interesting reading. The Clinton Administration found that ACORN was misspending government grants designed to help counsel the poor. Although it seeks minimum wage increases in cities and states across the country -- ACORN sued the state of California to get out of paying its own employees the state minimum wage.

ACORN's practices have corrupted our political process as well. It has engaged in questionable election activities for years—stretching back even to the organization's founding years in Arkansas . In recent years, as its political power has increased, so have instances of fraud.

In the past few years, it has been investigated for election fraud in at least a dozen states. Want examples?

In Florida, ACORN employees filed a false voter registration form for 68-year-old former St. Petersburg Democratic mayor Charles Schuh – amazingly, they registered him as a 30-year-old Republican woman. In Ohio, ACORN and its affiliate Project Vote submitted registration cards that had the highest rate of errors for any voter registration group. In Colorado, two ex-ACORN employees were convicted of turning in false registrations. The list goes on.

Just last year, in an effort to put a wage initiative on the ballot in Albuquerque, New Mexico, ACORN employee's forged thousands of fraudulent signatures . The group is involved in initiative efforts in a half-dozen states this year. How many thousands of signatures will they forge to forward their agenda?

It's time to send a message to ACORN. It is time to end the corruption.

Typical liberal elitism: do as I say, not as I do. Use any method to achieve your goal, legal or otherwise.

ACORN election fraud: more widespread than you think!

From Wisconsin's Texas Hold 'Em Blogger, comes this article about bleeding heart liberal left wing group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN):

H/T to A.J. Strata at The Strata-Sphere.

Looks like the nuts over at ACORN now have been caught in Pennsylvania again committing election fraud with phony voter registration forms.

From Delaware County in the Keystone State comes this story:

Question: If your last name were Abortion would you name any of your children Alternative? Probably not! So a more pertinent question is this: If you saw the name Alternative Abortion on a voter registration form, complete with an address and a social security number, you’d be suspicious, right?

You’d think somebody was playing a tasteless joke. Or maybe even committing a crime, because that’s what fraudulently filling out a voter registration form is, a crime.

This one is currently under investigation by Delaware County District Attorney’s office, along with hundreds of other suspicious voter registration forms turned into the county voter registration commission.

Not dozens. Not scores. But hundreds!

“If not thousands,” says county Solicitor John McBlain.

So far, the county has found more than 100 people who have told investigators and/or signed affidavits claiming someone wrongly tried to register to vote in their name. Another 542 registration forms were identified as having phony addresses and some 1,200 to 1,300 more also appear to be fraudulent.

What’s most interesting about this is that one organization submitted every single one of the near 2,000 registrations that are suspected or proven frauds.

That group is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, otherwise known as ACORN.

ACORN is not, as it claims, a nonpartisan group involved in improving education and helping communities. ACORN has been involved in minimum wage increase proposals, Wal-Mart bashing, advocating government-run health care and is a leftwing activist group which has been involved in numerous shady activities regarding voter registration all across the country.

Just last week, four ACORN workers were indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms in Kansas City, Mo. ACORN people have already been convicted in Colorado and Wisconsin and more are under investigation here and in Ohio.

Late last month, Delaware County Assistant District Attorney Joe Brielmann sent out a press release warning residents to be on the lookout for this sort of fraud and identity theft.

Of the four ACORN workers under investigation by county detectives, two are convicted felons (one a drug dealer, the other a convicted rapist.) Who better to help work for social justice in our communities?

By law, convicted felons cannot vote and cannot register voters. ACORN knows this, yet time and time again we see convicted felons filing phony voter registration cards, registering such names as “Mary Poppins,” “Dick Tracy” and “Jeffrey Dahmer” to vote, all from the same address in the same handwriting with the same signature.

Every time one of those fictitious people votes — or an illegal alien, or a convicted felon, or a dead person, for that matter — it makes my legitimate vote — and yours too — worthless.

If you go out and vote for Candidate A and I go vote for Candidate B, you didn’t render my vote worthless, nor mine yours, because we both legally participated in the process. But if Jose who snuck across the border and got a consular ID illegally from Voces de la Frontera and then used that consular ID to illegally obtain a state driver’s license which was used to illegally register to vote votes for Candidate A, then my vote is meaningless.

Same thing when the cemetery precincts all show up to vote. Same thing when the Racine Correctional Institution precincts, and so on. Notice they all vote Democrat — even the dead Republicans.

It’s high time the Attorney General and the Justice Department look at a federal prosecution of ACORN under any existing laws. This is clearly a nationwide campaign to commit election fraud. ACORN leaders are aware it’s happening and at least tacitly condone it, if not participate in and encourage it.

If the federal government can use RICO to go after protesters at abortion clinics, perhaps RICO might be applied here as well. The election fraudsters are a much bigger threat to our freedom than some protesters at an abortion clinic.

Amen, brother, Amen.

Aha! Just figured it out -- ACORN is based in New Orleans

Like everything else in New Orleans, ACORN is very seedy, very corrupt. Their home address just puts everything in perspective.

I wonder if Ray "Chocolate City" Nagan got elected thanks to their help?

If you'd like to contact them, give them a piece of your mind:

ACORN
1024 Elysian Fields Ave
New Orleans, LA 70117
chieforg@acorn.org
Phone: 504-943-0044
Fax: 504-944-7078

Obamunition - more stuff on The One's dangerous past and present

The ammunition just keeps on coming, and the Leftmedia keeps refusing to look into the background of their chosen candidate. Preferring, instead, to look into the underwear size of Joe the Plumber or Sarah's IQ.

In today's National Review, our favorite author in the media Stanley Kurtz lists more ties between the radical left New Party, Acorn, income redistribution and The One:

During his first campaign for the Illinois state senate in 1995-96, Barack Obama was a member of, and was endorsed by, the far-left New Party. Obama’s New Party ties give the lie to his claim to be a post-partisan, post-ideological pragmatist. Particularly in Chicago, the New Party functioned as the electoral arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). So despite repeated attempts to distance himself from ACORN, Obama’s New Party ties raise disturbing questions about his links to those proudly militant leftists. The media’s near-total silence on this critical element of Obama’s past is deeply irresponsible.

VerumSerum discovered that not only were Obama and Ayers pallin' around, they shared an office:

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama shared an office. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, the one Obama directed all that money to is located at 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607. In 1998, the address for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama presumably worked, was 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607.

According to this letter dated 1995, Obama’s office was on the 3rd floor. And according to this memo dated 1996, Small Schools Workshop was also on the 3rd floor.

Links to the documents here.

And Ken Timmerman's piece today over at Newsmax reminds us of the amount of potential foreign contributions, a violation of Federal law, could total as much as $63 million:

As Barack Obama reaped a stunning $150 million in campaign donations in September, bringing his total to more than $600 million, new questions have arisen about the source of his amazing funding.

By Obama’s own admission, more than half of his contributions have come from small donors giving $200 or less. But unlike John McCain’s campaign, Obama won’t release the names of these donors.

A Newsmax canvass of disclosed Obama campaign donors shows worrisome anomalies, including outright violations of federal election laws.

For example, Obama has numerous donors who have contributed well over the $4,600 federal election limit.

Many of these donors have never been contacted by the Obama campaign to refund the excess amounts to them.

And more than 37,000 Obama donations appear to be conversions of foreign currency. [emphasis mine - CTD]

According to a Newsmax analysis of the Obama campaign data before the latest figures were released, potential foreign currency donations could range anywhere from $12.8 million to a stunning $63 million in all. With the addition of $150 million raised in September, this amount could be much more.

Finally an article that Ayers is the ghost writer for Obama's two 'autobiographies' over at American Thinker:

Evidence continues to mount that Barack Obama had substantial help from Bill Ayers in the creation of his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, a book that Time Magazine has called "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician." The evidence falls into five general categories, here summarized.

• The discovery of new matching nautical metaphors from both Ayers and Obama that almost assuredly came from the same source: Ayers, a former merchant seaman.


• The discovery of a Bill Ayers' essay on memoir writing, whose postmodern themes and phrases are echoed throughout Dreams.


• A newly discovered book chapter from 1990 that shows clearly and painfully the limits of Obama's prose style the year he received a contract to write Dreams.


• The revelation by radical Islamicist Rashid Khalidi that Ayers made his "dining room table" available for neighborhood writers who needed help.


• A refined timeline that shows Ayers had the means, the motive and the time to help Obama when he needed it most.

So, we have a true empty suit (who couldn't even write his own memoirs), with ties to radical left-wing groups, receiving illegal foreign campaign contributions, totally un-vetted by the Leftmedia.

What's not to like about that?

Obama dimocrats: just one big circle jerk

Geez, it's all just one big circle jerk with these freakin' Obamaphiles. Is there ANYONE with ties to The One that doesn't have dirt on their hands (or jizz on their face)?

Over at Thurber's Thoughts, there's a new post linking Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's do-nothing Sexretary of State with Acorn:

So our Secretary of State shares a campaign advisor with ACORN, takes direction from ACORN's voter registration arm, and refuses to verify over 200,000 mismatched registrations while claiming there is no voter fraud going on in Ohio...and that attention to such frivolous issues distracts her from doing her job.

What else? Let me guess. A tape of Obama toasting a PLO terrorist.

Naw. Too easy.

David Limbaugh: Skip the "Liberal" Label

David Limbaugh's column today sums it all up. I usually avoid publishing a complete story, but this one's so important it needs to be published, and re-published, until Obama is stopped.

OK, Let's Skip the Liberal Label

There's little doubt America is a center-right nation, which is why Barack Obama denies and conceals his liberalism and packages himself as a harbinger of hope and change.

Obama's policies represent change all right: change from almost everything our Founding Fathers considered sacred and vital to the preservation of individual liberty in America.

He also offers hope: hope for those who share his shame in what America has become, what it stands for, and what makes it unique in world history. Hope that an unenlightened America can be remade by this "transformational" man in an image pleasing to George Soros, the Hollywood elite, MoveOn.org, the Daily Kos and Michael Moore.

But if labels bother you, let's look at Obama's alliances and policies and let them speak for themselves.

If you are so intoxicated with "hope" that you believe Obama wasn't aware of and not in sync with the Rev. Wright's militantly racist and anti-American views or his black liberation theology, then it's probably too much to ask for you to be objective about his links to Bill Ayers and ACORN.

Instead of restating Ayers' despicable actions and beliefs, I just want to know whether Obama believes Ayers has been rehabilitated, which he suggests when he touts him as "a professor of education." Though Obama says he was just 8 years old during Ayers' Pentagon-bombing days, he doesn't mention that he was an adult when he served on boards with Ayers, launched his state Senate campaign at his home, and gave a glowing jacket endorsement for Ayers' book. Nor does he tell you that just a few short years ago, Ayers stomped on the American flag and reaffirmed his pride in his criminal acts.

Concerning ACORN, what do you suppose the mainstream media would do to John McCain if an organization he represented, whose members he trained and who he promised would play a pivotal role in formulating his presidential policy agenda, were caught red-handed trying systematically to subvert the election process throughout America?

As for Obama's leftist policy positions and attitudes, how do you think the following would sit with most Americans?

• His enabling of infanticide by arguing and voting against the Induced Birth Infant Liability Act in the Illinois Senate, which would have protected babies who survive failed abortions.
• His support of open borders and driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.
• His casual endorsement of Marxist redistribution of wealth.
• His plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire, resulting in a massive tax increase for tens of millions, and his tax credits to tens of millions more not paying income taxes, all while fibbing that he's going to cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans.
• His plans to increase spending an estimated $1.3 trillion, not to mention the obscene dollars he would send overseas with the Global Poverty Act.
• His condemnation of our liberation of Iraq from the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein in furtherance of our national security interests yet promising military interventions for humanitarian reasons where we clearly have no national interests at stake.
• His opposition to the surge in Iraq and his plan to withdraw and jeopardize our imminent victory and the region's stability.
• His reckless plan to embroil us in a quagmire in Afghanistan and agitate Pakistan, our important ally in the war on terror.
• His naive commitment to negotiate with tyrants without preconditions.
• His inclination toward unilateral nuclear disarmament.
• His constant references to America's former greatness and his promises to restore our position of respectfulness in the world, betraying his full agreement that we've earned this supposed international disrespect.
• His forfeiture of American sovereignty to international bodies in obeisance to the pantheistic religion of global warming.
• His Kerryesque schizophrenia on guns and the Second Amendment.
• His derision of small-town Americans as bitter clingers.
• His thuggish approach toward those who dare to oppose him, such as Joe the Plumber, or anyone in St. Louis, whose criticism could have subjected them to criminal prosecution.
• His outright mocking of the Bible while adamantly insisting he's a strong Christian: "Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount -- a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application?"

Truthfully, I'm barely getting started. But can you honestly tell me Obama would have a prayer of being elected if he were honest about his agenda and allies and if the media, which share his radical views, weren't in the tank for him?

Don't vote for this radical, dangerous man and his minions, or his evil ideas.

Big money! Great prizes! Join ACORN today!

From Iowahawk. Heh.

Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

In a fascinating article at American Thinker,

America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama's connections to his radical mentors -- Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others.

Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. When seen together, the influences on Obama's life comprise a who's who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

But even this doesn't fully describe the extreme nature of this candidate. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s.

In an earlier post, I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

Why?

One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.

I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

Seems part of Alinsky's, and the Cloward-Piven strategy, is to overload the system until it fails. With illegal voter registrations (ACORN). With high-risk mortgages (Fannie/Freddie). With lawsuits questioning the constitutionality of every little detail of American life (ACLU).

This article digs even deeper than previous looks at the obamessiah. Read the entire article here.

Does Obama have ANY friends who aren't COMMUNISTS?

Rhetorical question, I know. As succinctly as can be told (from The Jawa Report), the story of O:

Question: Does Barack Obama Have Any Friends Who AREN'T Communists?
The news of Barack Obama's close relationship with Frank Marshall Davis has been around before, but it's important. Via Accuracy in Media:

[T]hrough Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his "poetry" and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just "Frank."

The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member.

Aren't we seeing a pattern here? One interaction with one old communist isn't particularly troubling. A handful of sporadic interactions with a handful of radical left-wingers may not be particularly troubling. But a lifelong pattern of extended associations and alliances with scores of fringe, America-hating radicals is very, very troubling indeed.

Just to be clear:

It's not just that Barack Obama's father was a Marxist economist or that his mother Stanley came from radical far-left roots.

It's not just that Obama's childhood mentor Frank Marshall Davis was a famous communist poet.

It's not just that Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor, counselor and spiritual mentor of 20 years is a racist, America-hating radical.

It's not just that Father Michael Phleger, Obama's other spiritual mentor is every bit as extreme as Wright.

It's not just that his wife Michelle has never been really that proud of America, or that she thinks this country is "mean".

It's not just that Obama refused to wear a flag, or that he refused to salute it during the national anthem.

It's not just that Obama's political and financial benefactor William Ayers is an unrepentant radical socialist terrorist.

It's not just that Bernadine Dohrn regrets that she didn't kill more people back in the 1960s.

It's not just that Alice Palmer, Obama's political mentor in Chicago, was a communist propagandist.

It's not just that Obama was a member of the radical socialist New Party or that he ran as a candidate for public office under their far-left platform.

It's not just that Obama was an agitator, trainer and attorney for the corrupt and radical-left ACORN.

None of these facts, by itself, tells you that much about Barack Obama. A reasonable person should, however, be able to look at this motley crew of left-wing communists and America-haters, realize that Barack Obama's rolodex is a veritable Who's Who of American Socialism, be very, very disturbed by that fact and ask some very probing questions about WHO Barack Obama is, WHAT he believes, and WHY this gang of radical America-haters considers Barack Obama such a good friend.

Connect the dots.

Nuance: The ACORN doesn't fall far from the tree.

True dat.

I am Joe

Started by the wacky Iowahawk (you gotta love this guy):

I hope you will join me in expressing a simple bit of solidarity with this guy, Spartacus style. I AM JOE. I am a Wal Mart schlub in flyover country who changes my own oil and unclogs drains without a license. I smoke and drink beer and toss the football in the front yard with my kid, and I figure I can fend my way without handouts from some Magic Messiah's candy bags. Most everyone in my family and most everyone I grew up with is another Joe, and if you screw with them, you screw with me.

Are you a Joe? Say it proud. Leave it on every goddamn newspaper comment section and online forum. Let these pressroom and online thugs know you won't stay silent when they try to destroy the life of a private citizen for speaking his mind -- because for every one of them, there are a million Joe Wurzelbachers. And for that we should all be thankful.

I am Joe.

I'm from a white, lower-middle class neighborhood. My father was a high-school dropout who joined the U.S. Army, got his G.E.D., and became a highly-valued computer systems analyst in the 1960's.

I worked my way through college (along with help from the Veterans Administration), and I've been unemployed at times, but I've never collected a penny of unemployment. I have my own web development and graphic design business, and I'm supporting my family. I work hard every day, I go to Mass on Sunday, I listen to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and watch Fox News. I support John McCain for President of the United States, Sarah Palin as the Vice President.

I believe in small government, low taxes, I believe in God, Ronald Reagan, and the Constitution of the United States of America, the First and Second (actually ALL) Amendments. I believe a strong military and closed borders. I believe life begins at conception, and that all abortion is MURDER.

I'm a member of the National Rife Association. I own a shotgun, a handgun and a compound bow and I hunt whitetail deer. I love the outdoors, I LOVE my wife and kid, I LOVE the United States of America, the state of Ohio, and the Ohio State Buckeyes.

Bring it on, Barack Hussein Obama and Joe Biden. Bring your ACORN and lefty college cronies to our state, try to steal the election. Get the democratic Secretary of State and left-leaning Supreme Court on your side, it's not enough. We will win, or we will die trying.

I am a proud American.

I am Joe.

UPDATE: spread the word. Like Spartacus, we are all Joe. Post this on every blog, on every comment section of every website, on every newspaper comment section. Post post post.

I am Joe.

Man in squirrel suit confronts Ohio's... squirrelly Democrats

Just saw this on the news a little while ago. From WBNS-10TV here in Columbus:

A man who was dressed in a squirrel costume was escorted from the Ohio Statehouse steps on Monday morning while Gov. Ted Strickland, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and Mayor Michael Coleman were discussing negative campaigning by Republicans.

The squirrel held up a sign that said, "Don't Let Obama + ACORN Steal Ohio."

Strickland, Brown and Coleman stood on the Statehouse steps to call for an end to what they called "lying, deceitful ads" by Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, 10TV's Patrick Bell reported.

That guy has some huge nuts.

Obama to Acorn: You will shape my agenda

No surprise. Video Obama can't hide from. (h/t Bookworm Room):