How Obama Supports Acorn

Senator Obama has worked hand in glove with ACORN, the group under investigation for voter fraud in many states, for many years. You won’t find our press reporting these connections, so if you want the true facts on Barack Obama sometimes you have to read foreign papers, strange as it seems. Here you seen an article at Canada Free Press that outlines those recent legislative ties:

Not only did Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign pay more than U.S. $800,000 to a front of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform, Now, ACORN, currently under investigation in a dozen States for voter registration fraud and bribery schemes, for “get-out-the-vote-efforts”; Obama co-sponsored legislation called the “Helping Families Save their Homes in Bankruptcy Act of 2007”– that was supported by ACORN and protects them.

On the surface the goal was noble, but like his record with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack’s efforts on the housing front led to zero results, unless you want to look at the monumental meltdown of financial companies from choking on sub prime loans forced down their throats, which is a very bad result. If you go to the areas Obama organized in, if you look at housing in his state, you see people no better off or worse off. See Here.

Acorn has fought foreclosures but also supported legislation that enabled this credit market meltdown for almost two decades. They are particularly responsible for helping raise the caps on permissible loan to values, lowering of the standards at Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac (FNMA & GMAC,) as well as legislation that increased the percent of subprime loans they had to carry. So in a way Acorn helped open the subprime floodgates and helped create a whole new class of victims to feed into their political causes.

You won’t see the McCain campaign bring this up for a few reasons. Even though Acorn and Democrat legislators created the sub-prime valley of vultures that poor people were fed into, even though they profited with donations from the very predatory lenders that they trailblazed the market for, it’s a no go simply because the defense will be to show America a non stop calvacade of poor people getting foreclosed upon. Poor people who were sold a dream that was really a nightmare by pernicious legislators who would rather crush our economy than lose an election.

See previous articles here and here.

UPDATE: From their 2002 Brochure you can see Acorn lobbying for money for their “credit counseling groups”:

  •  
    • Congress should increase funding for the HUD Housing Counseling program from $50 million to
      $75 million, with some of the increase earmarked for foreclosure prevention counseling.
    • Cities, Counties, States, and the Mortgage Industry should provide funding for community outreach to
      borrowers in danger of losing their homes and to housing counseling programs to help homeowners
      avoid foreclosure.
    • States and the Federal Government should set up and provide the start-up money for Rescue Funds (such as the state of Ohio is doing), but these funds should be fully financed by the Mortgage Industry.

What this amounts to is creating victim classes and then using them to shake-down the mortgage industry – it took 20 years, but recently Acorn got what they really wanted through their support of regulations in Congress that led to this very debacle, and they are profiting by it just as much as those fat cats at Countrywide.

The Democrats are Burning Down the House and Wallstreet

We must fix or rollback the securitization provisions of the Community Reinvestment Act or we will simply be back here in ten or fifteen years wailing about another near Trillion dollar bailout. This must stop, neither housing nor credit is a right, and neither banks nor Government Sponsored Agencies like Fannie and Freddie should be required by congress to carry ridicoulously large percentages of SUBPRIME loans. They are called subprime for a reason.

Any candidate for any office who does not make reform of draconian CRA requirements on Fannie and Freddie and banking in general part of their platform should be receiving letters now, and I am including McCain in that.

Mum

McCain has spoken about the financial crisis at length, in a couple of places I do disagree with him. Much of the fault here does lie with Congress, and John seems unwilling to assign their portion of blame. Perhaps he’s saving that for the debates however, you’ve seen plenty of material here. One thing I do know: Capitalism works best with less regulations. This whole mess is because of a crazy quilt of financial regs including CRA that work at counter purposes and which result in two socialist government backed housing lending agencies both ripe for corruption and abuse.

Obama Sex Ed for Kindergartners Ad is True

Last week the McCain campaign released an ad that I also carried stating that Obama supported teaching comprehensive sex education to kindergartners. The Obama camp immediately went into high dudgeon and hysteria, calling the ad a lie, and by implication McCain a liar. The ad turns out to be true, it did miss another Obama education “accomplishment”, but more on that later.

First Byron York at National Review Online investigated the ad, and you can read the article here, below is Byron’s conclusion:

Obama’s explanation for his vote has been accepted by nearly all commentators. And perhaps that is indeed why he voted for Senate Bill 99, although we don’t know for sure. But we do know that the bill itself was much more than that. The fact is, the bill’s intention was to mandate sex education, especially concerning contraception and the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases, for children before the sixth grade and as early as kindergarten. Obama’s defenders may howl, but the bill is what it is. [* note that the reply is much more extensive than this, please go to the site and read the full detail]

You can also see the key provisions of the K-6 additions that bill 99 added at McCain’s campaign website in their detailed reply:

Please find the facts below:

In the Illinois State Legislature, Barack Obama voted for legislation to alter Illinois’ Sex Education standards to include instruction in any grade from Kindergarten through 12th grade. The legislation passed Barack Obama’s Illinois Senate Health and Human Services Committee that he chaired. As the Chicago Daily Herald stated, “the legislation included a provision to allow students from kindergarten through fifth grade to be added to the middle and high school students receiving sex education.”

Despite the Obama campaign’s claims, this bill was intended to provide children as young as Kindergarten with sex education. According to the legislation itself, “Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.” This legislation stated expressly that children in grade 12 were to be education about sexually transmitted diseases.

In 2007, Barack Obama told Planned Parenthood that he supported sex education for Kindergarteners as long as it was “age-appropriate.” Thus on two separate occasions we have Barack Obama supporting the expansion of sex education to Kindergarteners.

Defending Barack Obama’s statement, the Obama campaign cited far-reaching SIECUS curriculum as the model. The SIECUS curriculum goes far beyond appropriate touching. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) supports a comprehensive approach to sex education, beginning as early as ages 5-8. For Level 1 sex education (ages 5 through 8), the guidelines include much more than appropriate touching. The curriculum includes lines that are not appropriate for us to state here but please see the link to the guidelines here: http://www.siecus.org/_data/global/images/guidelines.pdf. This is the model provided by the Obama campaign and no one else.

You can also reference the Chicago Tribune article on the bill from that time:

Chicago Daily Herald: “At one point, the legislation included a provision to allow students from kindergarten through fifth grade to be added to the middle and high school students receiving sex education. Obama was chairman of the Senate committee that voted along party lines to move along the measure, which ultimately went nowhere.” (Eric Krol, “Obama Clarifies Sex Ed Views At Benedictiine,” Chicago Daily Herald, 10/6/04)

Will Barack Obama’s reply be that this was one of those days when he wasn’t there but voted “present?” There’s no real comeback for Barry, he either was there and wasn’t paying attention even though he was chair, or he supported teaching comprehensive sex ed to Kindergartners.

Barack Obama doesn’t have many actions due to his lack of experience, so we have to judge him by the few we can find — this is one, the only other education accomplishment I can find is his appointment of liberal cronies and leftists as principals in Chicago schools under the Annenberg Challenge with Bill Ayers.