Obama and ACORN

The Wall Street Journal online had a pretty hard-hitting piece on Barack Obama's association with the ACORN organization. The article was titled, "Obama and Acorn: Community organizers, phony voters, and your tax dollars."

The Journal starts out with a bit of history about ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The group has been around for nearly 40 years, and has about 350,000 members, the Journal says. The Journal makes its opinion known right up front by saying, "It's about time someone exposed this shady outfit that uses government dollars to lobby for larger government."

The article then explains how ACORN operates, using "...various affiliated groups to agitate for 'a living wage,' for 'affordable housing,' for 'tax justice' and union and environmental goals, as well as school choice and welfare reform. It was a major contributor to the subprime meltdown by pushing lenders to make home loans on easy terms, conducting 'strikes' against banks so they'd lower credit standards."

Except for the pressure on banks, the rest sounds to me like a pretty normal liberal agenda. "But," the Journal says, "the organization's real genius is getting American taxpayers to foot the bill." The article then cites a 2006 report done by the Employment Policies Institute that says ACORN "...claimed $240,000 in tax money between fiscal years 2002 and 2003" for its American Institute for Social Justice. Further, the Journal says, ACORN's American Environmental Justice Project got ALL of its revenue through government grants in 2002 and 2003, and an estimated $16 million in federal dollars for the years 1997 through 2007.

"All this money," the Journal says, "gives Acorn the ability to pursue its other great hobby: electing liberals. Acorn is spending $16 million this year to register new Democrats and is already boasting it has put 1.3 million new voters on the rolls. The big question is how many of these registrations are real." The Journal then recounts some of the recent allegations against ACORN, including charges of fraudulent voter registration in Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, North Carolina, Missouri, Wisconsin, Texas and Indiana.

Then the Journal transitions to ACORN's association with Barack Obama. "In 1992," the Journal says, "he led voter registration efforts as the director of Project Vote, which included Acorn. This past November, he lauded Acorn's leaders for being 'smack dab in the middle' of that effort. Mr. Obama also served as a lawyer for Acorn in 1995, in a case against Illinois to increase access to the polls."

The Journal continues: "During his tenure on the board of Chicago's Woods Fund, that body funneled more than $200,000 to Acorn. More recently, the Obama campaign paid $832,000 to an Acorn affiliate. The campaign initially told the Federal Election Commission this money was for 'staging, sound, lighting.' It later admitted the cash was to get out the vote."

The Obama campaign maintains it has nothing to do with illegal voter registration. Personally, I believe Obama himself is not directly involved. He has too much at stake this close to the presidency. But I wouldn't go as far as to say that people associated with his campaign are not involved. The Journal's take on this: "...it's disingenuous to channel cash into an operation with a history of fraud and then claim you're shocked to discover reports of fraud."

"As with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers," the Journal says, "Mr. Obama was happy to associate with Acorn when it suited his purposes. But now that he's on the brink of the Presidency, he wants to disavow his ties."