Wolking’s World

From Obama’s own website, a post touting his endorsement by ACORN’s PAC early this year:

Alicia Russell of Arizona, ACORN’s western regional representative, said Obama relates to the issues facing low- and moderate-income people. “I think he will commit himself to providing us the necessary path for the low-income and moderate-income families to improve their lives,” Russell said. “He’s on the same level as we are, and sees our issues as we do.”

In the past three weeks, Sen. Obama has met with ACORN leaders regarding foreclosure prevention solutions, including a roundtable discussion on Tuesday in San Antonio.

“Texas ACORN members are proud to stand with Senator Obama in calling for fundamental change in our economy to protect homeowners and neighborhoods from the scourge of foreclosures that is sweeping communities across Texas,” said Texas ACORN president Toni McElroy.

When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education.  Senator Obama said, “I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That’s what I did for three and half years before I went to law school.   That’s the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it.  I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career.  Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”

The Reuters account of the roundtable with ACORN in San Antonio is here.

So ACORN advised Obama on “foreclosure prevention solutions.” What kind of solutions does ACORN support? From its website:

ACORN members have worked with legislators to pass foreclosure moratoriums in Minn.; Contra Costa County, Calif.; and Wilmington, Del.

That seems interesting considering Obama’s proposal just announced yesterday, a 90-day foreclosure moratorium. Michelle Malkin notes the same thing, as well as Obama’s flip flop on the issue.

By the way, Obama’s “Fight the Smears” site is busy scrubbing it’s “facts” to comport to the ever changing story of just how connected to ACORN Obama really is. Obama said himself he’s been “fighting alongside ACORN” his “entire career.” Doesn’t get much closer with that.

Too bad for The One that Gateway Pundit has a photo of him meeting with ACORN members as an Illinois Senate candidate in 2004 as well.

Also, in case anybody likes a little irony with their hypocrisy, Maude Hurd, ACORN’s National President, is one of the ACORN leaders also quoted in the endorsement article above. Back in 1999 she spoke at a Federal Reserve Board public meeting regarding the merger of Fleet Financial and BankBoston. You can view her remarks in this PDF. There, she championed the very practices that got us into this subprime mess and railed against the “conservative Congress” trying to “dismantle the Community Reinvestment Act.” She even tosses in a little race-baiting for good measure.

ACORN members have fought redlining and mortgage discrimination all across the country. We use the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and Community Reinvestment Act to negotiate innovative agreements with banks that remedy past discrimination …

ACORN’s housing program has won awards for its success in helping low income and minority borrowers successfully get and pay their mortgages. Our agreements with banks include progressive underwriting standards, intensive one-on-one housing counseling for borrowers, and, wherever possible, below-market interest rates.

Fleet signed an agreement to participate in the ACORN program in 1995, when they were buying Shawmut Bank. The agreement covered Massachusetts and Connecticut and has produced over 1,000 successful homeowners, and more than $120 million dollars in mortgages. The program also increased access to home ownership for single parents, recent immigrants, lower income buyers, and people who don’t qualify for traditional mortgage underwriting, but who still pay their bills and pay them on time…

But as the 90s draw to a close, we are starting to see a downward trend in lending to minority and low income census tracts. As banks like Fleet get bigger and less accountable to local communities, they walk away from innovative programs and begin to use cookie-cutter formulas that try to fit everyone into a white-middle-class ideal of good credit. Sometimes they even get encouragement from Washington, as the conservative Congress tries to dismantle the Community Reinvestment Act.

Yeah, that Community Reinvestment Act. Turns out Barney Frank’s recent cry of racism is nothing new, either.

UPDATE: This just gets better and better. From Daily Kos:

Daily Kos acknowledges Obama’s “deep connection” to ACORN:

Obama ran Project Vote with the help of ACORN, and I believe his first legal case was representing ACORN. In short Obama has been fighting with ACORN on the issues that matter most for his entire career.

At the bottom of this February post is info on who to contact if you want to apply for a job with Ohio ACORN, to canvass neighborhoods for Obama voters:

GOTV for Obama! Ohio ACORN is doing a Get Out The Vote project with the OBAMA Campaign. Ohio ACORN is hiring canvassers to go door to door encouraging voters to vote for Barack Obama.

ACORN is hiring in Cleveland (216)431-3905, Columbus (614)425-9491, Cincinnati (513)221-1737, for Dayton (call Cincinnati), and for Toledocall Cleveland. Or email polnatoh@acorn.org and your inquiry will be routed to the appropriate person in each of these cities. Intake and training will be held daily at local ACORN offices. Canvass begins on Wednesday Feb. 27th and will work through election day. Please, only persons wishing to work all or most of these days (Saturday and Sunday included) should inquire.

Please do not contact the Obama campaign directly regarding this post as they are not the organization doing the hiring and it will only distract their staff and volunteers from the other important work they are doing on behalf of Senator Obama.

So who was actually paying for this canvassing? Obama or ACORN? If it was ACORN, then partisan activity was being funded by taxpayers. If it was Obama, it shows the Citizens Services Inc. excuse to be a lie.

Reported the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review back in August:

Jim Terry, spokesman for a group that tracks ACORN, said Citizens Services Inc.’s involvement in the Obama campaign raises bigger questions.

“All of this just seems like an awful lot of money and time spent on political campaigning for an organization that purports to exist to help low-income consumers,” said Terry, chief public advocate for Consumers Rights League, a Washington, D.C., advocacy outfit with a libertarian outlook.

“ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain,” Terry claimed. “Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama’s political gain.”

Obama is the CSI’s first national candidate, although the company has worked for several regional candidates in recent years, said Jeff Robinson, CSI’s executive vice president.

“Our contracts were relatively small for Obama,” he said, declining to specify amounts because of “proprietary” rights of CSI’s clients. The largest project for Obama was during the Ohio primary, he said.

“That was a very short-term contract for one week of work. In Ohio, they asked us to do canvasses in five cities statewide,” Robinson said.

The Ohio primary was March 4. According to FEC records, the Obama campaign paid Citizens Services Inc. $832,598.29, from Feb. 25 to May 17.

A Trib analysis of campaign finance reports showed Obama paid CSI for services that stood out as unusual. For example, CSI received payments of $63,000 and $75,000 for advance work. Excluding the large payments to CSI, the average amount the Obama campaign spent with other organizations was $558.82 per check on more than 1,200 entries classified as advance work.

Citizens Services Inc. is headquartered at the same address as ACORN’s national headquarters in New Orleans. Citizens Services was established in December 2004 to “assist persons and organizations who advance the interests of low- and moderate-income people,” according to paperwork filed in Louisiana. In a 2006 ACORN publication, Citizen Services Inc. is described as “ACORN’s campaign services entity.”

Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo. Count ‘em, that’s five. That’s how many cities are listed in Ohio ACORN’s canvassers ad, and how many cities Jeff Robinson of CSI says the Obama campaign paid for. So if Obama paid CSI for campaign work, and CSI is ACORN’s campaign services entity, why is the ad looking to hire canvassers for Obama put out by ACORN?

Continues the Tribune article:

Regarding CSI’s nonprofit status, Robinson said: “We are organized specifically not to make money, but we make money. There are no profits. We have a staff of 60 people around the country, and that eats up our entire profit. We’re not a for-profit corporation, but we are not a group like a United Way.”

CSI is a “separate organization entirely” from ACORN, he said.

“ACORN is a client of ours,” Robinson said. “ACORN has a lot of different partner organizations. We are a partner, but we are separate.”

Robinson is listed on several Web sites as national deputy political director for campaigns and elections at ACORN. He is also listed as political director at the nonprofit Communities Voting Together and as a consultant at Project Vote. He did not return phone calls or an e-mail request for a follow-up interview.

Money flows back and forth between ACORN, Citizens Services Inc., Project Vote and Communities Voting Together. ACORN posts job ads for Citizens Services and Project Vote. Communities Voting Together contributed $60,000 to Citizens Services Inc., for example, in November 2005, according to a posting on CampaignMoney.com. Project Vote has hired ACORN and CSI as its highest paid contractors, paying ACORN $4,649,037 in 2006 and CSI $779,016 in 2006, according to Terry of the Consumers Rights League.

Heh.

UPDATE: An Obama supporter says this could be a “game changer” for her.

This ACORN stuff is really really bad.  As a voter, I really need to know that Obama wasn’t funding an organization that willingly engaged in voter fraud.

Obama’s “Fight the Smears” site is still wrong. It’s already been scrubbed a couple times, and the Cleveland Leader is hammering away on Obama’s cover-up. Right now, it states:

Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

But in the article from Obama’s own site, Obama is quoted as saying:

“[W]hen I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it.”

Countdown to next scrubbing: imminent.

I feel a beautiful McCain ad coming on.