How Close is President Obama to ACORN?

The community organization ACORN is currently under fire lately due to recent undercover videos showing ACORN employees giving advice to a pimp and prostitute on how to evade taxes and set up a brothel that includes underage girls. ACORN is also currently under investigation for voter fraud in at least 14 states across the nation...many employees have been convicted. The question remains how close is President Obama with ACORN?

Let's start with Obama's own words. This short video clip was during an interview with George Stephanopoulos on September 20, 2009...



Since these undercover videos have been released the Census Bureau severed ties with ACORN and will have no participation in the 2010 United States of American Census. Also, the House, Senate, and IRS have passed legislation to defund ACORN to stop government grants. In addition, almost 30 congressman have called for investigation into ACORN and their practices. In the above video President Obama passes it off by saying it's not something he's following closely, didn't know ACORN was even getting a lot of federal money, and not the biggest issue facing the country...he basically changes the subject.

Did you know that the $878 billion stimulus bill passed earlier this year, that President Obama signed, included $8.5 billion going to ACORN? So if Obama didn't know ACORN was getting a lot of federal funding he's admitting that he didn't read the bill. Here's some more words of President Obama and his relationship to ACORN during one of the presidential debates with John McCain. At the beginning of this clip Obama talks about his relationship with William Ayers (another story, another time) and then about one minute and fifty seconds he explains his relationshiop with ACORN...



Obama said, "...the only involvement I've had with ACORN was I represented them...in making Illinois implement a motor-voter law that helped people get registered at DMV's." In reality, Obama's relationship with ACORN goes back 20 years and are long-time friends. Let me explain...

1. As a lawyer, Barack Obama did represent ACORN in the motor-voter law as explained above, which has helped hundreds of thousands get registered to vote.


2. ACORN's political action committee endorsed Obama for president, and his campaign paid an ACORN susidiary $832,000 to help get out the vote.


3. Pre-law days, Obama was a community organizer and Madeleine Talbot, who at the time was a leader at Chicago ACORN, was so impressed with Obama's organizing skills that she invited him to help train her own staff.


4. Obama's long service with ACORN led many members to serve as the volunteer shock troops of Obama's early political campaign - his initial 1996 State Senate campaign, and his failed bid for Congress in 2000. With Obama having personally help train a new cadre of Chicago ACORN leaders, by the time of Obama's 2004 U.S. Senate campagin, Obama and ACORN were "old friends."


5. Chicago ACORN appears to have played a major role in Obama's political advance. Sure enough, a bit of digging into Obama's years in the Illinois State Senate indicates strong concern with ACORN's signature issues.


6. Obama served on boards of two charitable foundations, the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation, which allowed him to help direct tens of millions of dollars in grants to various liberal organizations, including Chicago ACORN, whose endorsement Obama saught and won in his State Senate race.


7. Obama not only sought and received the endorsement of ACORN's political arm in his local campaigns, he recently accepted ACORN’s endorsement for the presidency, in pursuit of which he reminded ACORN officials of his long-standing ties to the group.
   

Obama knows exactly who ACORN is and what they are all about. To think otherwise is ludicris.

Here's another video clip of Obama at a community organization event where ACORN was present and his plan for them when he becomes president...



ACORN, and other community organization are going to help "shape the agenda" and give "input" when Obama's in the White House. These community organization and political action groups are part of the "coalition of power" that Obama needs to bring about "redistributive change".

In 2001, on Chicago Public Radio Barack Obama said the following:



Now this is just the tip of the iceberg on what Obama wants to do this country...he said it himself five days before winning the elections: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." I don't think this is the kind of hope and change Obama supporters were expecting.

Main Source: "Inside Obama's Acorn" by Stanley Kurtz - NRO Contributing Editor, May 29, 2008.