A Mighty Calamity from Little ACORNs

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Most Americans have never heard of the organization called ACORN (the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now). Founded in the 1970s by Vietnam-era anti-war radicals, ACORN’s strategy has been to overload  government social programs to undermine the free market system that supports them. For years, ACORN pressured banks to issue loans to low-income families without the ability to repay those loans. Their Democratic allies (Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Christopher Dodd to name but a few) pressured the quasi-governmental agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to underwrite many risky loans.

When the housing bubble burst, it set off a wave of economic havoc in the financial sector that now threatens to overwhelm the American taxpayer with trillions of dollars in bailouts. For the people at ACORN this is an accomplishment beyond their wildest dreams. What many in the mainstream media refuse to tell the American people is that a young Barack Obama helped train many of ACORN’s Chicago activists in the 1980s.

A leading organizer of Chicago’s ACORN chapter, Madeline Talbott, told the Los Angeles Times, “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.”

In fact, after the savings and loan collapse, ACORN used its influence with Liberal members of Congress to gain even more sway in the nation’s financial decision-making.

According to the organization’s website, “ACORN began playing the insiders’ game in American politics. Instead of confronting opponents…members could trade and negotiate from inside positions of power. ACORN members won appointment to the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to help determine the management of the billions of dollars of assets the government seized. The payoff to these activities came, and still comes, when substantial numbers of ACORN members developed the ability to move inside the political sphere…”

Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, added a special prevision to the recent Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bailout bill. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, “…the biggest payoff for Mr. Frank is the "affordable housing" trust fund he managed to push through as one political price for the recent Fannie reform bill. This fund siphons off a portion of Fannie and Freddie profits – as much as $500 million a year each – to a fund that politicians can then disburse to their favorite special interests.”

As an advocate of “affordable housing,” the “community organizers” at ACORN would benefit from Barney Franks’ taxpayer-funded slush fund. It’s a small price to pay for the first-rate job “community organizers” did in bringing down the economy of the political Left’s “Great Satan.”

The former ACORN community organizer from Chicago had this to say of our national crisis, “The old trickle-down theory has failed us,” said Obama, “ [w]e can't afford four more years like the last eight.” In other words, the free market and a hopelessly bipartisan Republican President are responsible for the credit meltdown. Obama’s strategy seems to be working. Recent polls show Obama widening his lead over McCain.

Of the worse financial crisis to confront the United States since the Great Depression, McCain said, “Now is not the time to fix the blame. It's time to fix the problem." What McCain and the many Republicans afflicted with the morally debilitating disease of bipartisanship fail to acknowledge is that assigning blame is the first step on the road to justice. Assigning blame precedes criminal indictments. Assigning blame points the way to truth. “He who is a partner with a thief hates his own life; He hears the oath but tells nothing,”

Like a fire chief heartily welcoming serial arsonists into the volunteer fire brigade, McCain implores the Democrats who engineered this disaster to help fix it. The empty bipartisan mantra “country first” is a disservice to our country if in its name McCain refuses to identify the guilty or fight the good fight for justice.

 --Mr. Curmudgeon