From a Not-So-Little ACORN, A Mighty Socialist State Could Grow
- Rick Scarborough
- Oct 9, 2009
H.A.L.T. Obama Newsletter
Vol. 1, Ed. 3 - Oct.9, 2009
From a Not-So-Little ACORN, A Mighty Socialist State Could Grow By Dr. Rick Scarborough
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has a reputation for many things, including: harassing banks, promoting illegal immigration, physically intimidating elected officials, and voter fraud - but national security?
Why then, you might ask, is ACORN the recipient of a $997,402 grant from the Department of Homeland Security - money that usually goes to enhance the operations of local fire departments?
That's right; ACORN's national headquarters in New Orleans is getting almost $1 million from Homeland Security less than a month after Congress voted to cut off funding to the scandal-ridden group. My sources tell me that for all the de-funding talk, ACORN is still receiving tens of millions of dollars from Washington and is scheduled to receive billions from various Obama bailout bills. Freedom-loving Americans cannot go back to sleep on this one, and I assure you that we are monitoring this matter on a daily basis.
This particular funding pool is supposed to be used for smoke-alarms for low-income families. Louisiana's St. Tammany Parish Fire District No. 3 applied for $120,000 for this purpose, after a January fire killed four children in a home without working smoke detectors. The grant was not approved, but what's the safety of children compared to promoting socialism?
DHS has not responded to requests for an explanation from Louisiana Sen. David Vitter. The Department, led by Secretary Janet Napolitano, is the Keystone Cops of national security. Earlier this year, it put out a report identifying returning Iraq veterans, gun owners and right-to-lifers as potential terrorist threats. This was later withdrawn after a congressional uproar.
The truth is, the Obama administration will go to absurd lengths to funnel tax-dollars to its favorite "community organizers."
With more than 1,200 chapters across the United States, and over 400,000 members, ACORN is Obama's auxiliary army - an organization committed to Alinsky-like tactics, pushing a hard left agenda.
ACORN is vehemently anti-business, seeks a government monopoly on health-care services, opposes school vouchers, and supports amnesties for illegal aliens.
A Manhattan Institute publication explains that ACORN "promotes a 1960s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism, central planning, victimization, and government handouts to the poor." It also maintains close ties to big labor (which provides much of its "private" funding) and the national Democratic Party - which seems to have only one wing.
President Obama's ACORN ties go back to 1992, when he worked with the group on a voter-registration drive in Chicago. The future president also helped train a cadre of ACORN organizers to extort mortgage money for low-income borrowers from local banks. As a director of the Woods Fund, Obama helped to direct grants to his favorite activist group. He also served briefly as one of the group's attorneys.
But all is not well in community organizer-land. On September 10, Glenn Beck aired a tape showing two employees of ACORN's Baltimore office advising individuals who they thought were a prostitute and her pimp on how to avoid taxes on income from a brothel they were supposedly going to open and staff with underage illegals from El Salvador. It turns out that this incident wasn't the only one involving a branch of ACORN that saw nothing wrong with defrauding the government while aiding and abetting criminals. Several other equally outrageous tapes have surfaced, all of which may be viewed on YouTube or at Glenn Beck's website.
Since 2003, there have been literally dozens of cases of ACORN being implicated in voter fraud. In October 2008, the City Commissioners of Philadelphia voted unanimously to turn over to the office of the U.S. Attorney 50,663 fraudulent voter-registration forms submitted by ACORN, including 35,888 duplicates.
Rounding out the picture, Louisiana's Attorney General, who is a Democrat, announced on Tuesday that he was stepping up an investigation of the embezzlement of ACORN funds a decade ago. ACORN admits its former CEO took $1 million dollars out of the till. The A.G. says the sum is closer to $5 million. Fortunately, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, and the Attorney General are determined to discover the extent of ACORN's criminal activity in this regard.
Congress may have voted to cut off funds to ACORN (as a symbolic gesture?), but officials of the Obama administration are keeping the spigot wide open. Looking ahead to the crucial 2010 election, the left intends to continue, and perhaps accelerate, the looting of the Treasury to supply its partisan army.
If we Americans refuse to put an end to these shenanigans, we deserve everything we get.
Dr. Rick Scarborough founded Vision America in 1998 as an organization whose mission is to "inform and mobilize Pastors and their congregations to become salt and light, becoming pro-active in restoring Judeo-Christian values in America." He has published the widely acclaimed 252-page book appropriately entitled, Enough is Enough; a Call to Christian Involvement. Other published works include, In Defense of Mixing Church and State and It All Depends on What Is...Is. In 2007 he published Liberalism Kills Kids.
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