Michael Gaynor
Will ACORN's favorite president socialize America?
By Michael Gaynor
On September 12, 2008, New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom emailed ACORN whistleblower (and then confidential Strom source) Anita MonCrief: "...I'm wondering whether you can give me any more details about the Nov. 2007 meeting with the Obama camp. Where did it take place? Who was involved? Any details would help."
As Democrat presidential candidate, then Senator Obama never said (at least in public) that he would transform the United States of America into a socialist society. (He WAS caught on tape, at a private fundraiser in San Francisco, essentially parroting the Marxist line about religion being the opiate of the people, but any promise he made to take over America's banks after his inauguration never appeared on the public radar.)
Candidate Obama was distressed and discombobulated when "Joe the Plumber" astutely replied to him that what he had said sounded like socialism, but he politically survived his chance encounter with "Joe," thanks to the media.
Still, the evidence of Obama radical ties was there to find and National Journal had ranked then Senator Obama as the most liberal United States senator, even more liberal than admitted socialist Bernard Sanders of Vermont.
In order to win the presidency, Obama needed to obfuscate and appear moderate and he needed the liberal media establishment to help him by not reporting everything that voters should have known.
Obama blatantly misrepresented his relationship with ACORN, even in the last presidential debate, and smoothly and softly explained away his other radical associations, while the liberal media establishment paved his path to the White House and lauded him and his spouse.
On September 12, 2008, New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom emailed ACORN whistleblower (and then confidential Strom source) Anita MonCrief: "...I'm wondering whether you can give me any more details about the Nov. 2007 meeting with the Obama camp. Where did it take place? Who was involved? Any details would help."
But, so Ms. Strom told Ms. MonCrief on October 21, 2008, Ms. Strom's editors told her to "stand down" and stopped her from going to Washington, D.C. to meet with Ms. MonCrief because they feared the story that Ms. Strom was working on with Ms. MonCrief might be "a game changer."
Dick Morris titled his latest alarming article "Obama's Leap to Socialism."
Mr. Morris:
"President Obama showed his hand this week when The New York Times wrote that he is considering converting the stock the government owns in our country's banks from preferred stock, which it now holds, to common stock.
"This seemingly insignificant change is momentous. It means that the federal government will control all of the major banks and financial institutions in the nation. It means socialism.
"The Times dutifully dressed up the Obama plan as a way to avoid asking Congress for more money for failing banks. But the implications of the proposal are obvious to anyone who cares to look."
When George W. Bush was still in the White House, socialism in America was held at bay, even during the financial crisis.
Mr. Morris:
"...to avoid the issue of a potential for government control of the banks, everybody agreed that the stock the feds would take back in return for their money would be preferred stock, not common stock. 'Preferred' means that these stockholders get the first crack at dividends, but only common stockholders can actually vote on company management or policy. Now, by changing this fundamental element of the TARP plan, Obama will give Washington a voting majority among the common stockholders of these banks and other financial institutions. The almost 500 companies receiving TARP money will be, in effect, run by Washington.
"And whoever controls the banks controls the credit and, therefore, the economy. That's called socialism."
Of course, President Obama is claiming to be helping the taxpayers, NOT acknowledging that he is remaking America as a socialist society.
Mr. Morris:
"Obama is dressing up the idea of the switch to common stock by noting that the conversion would provide the banks with capital they could use without a further taxpayer appropriation. While this is true, it flies in the face of the fact that an increasing number of big banks and brokerage houses are clamoring to give back the TARP money. Goldman-Sachs, for example, wants to buy back its freedom, as do many banks. Even AIG is selling off assets to dig its way out from under federal control. The reason, of course, is that company executives do not like the restrictions on executive pay and compensation that come with TARP money. It is for this reason that Chrysler Motors refused TARP funds.
"With bank profits up and financial institutions trying to give back their money, there is no need for the conversion of the government stock from preferred to common — except to advance the political socialist agenda of this administration."
Just as The New York Times is promoting the Obama plan to have the federal government control the banks as a boon to taxpayers now, it promoted the Obama presidential campaign and even protected Obama from exposure of his true relationship with ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) last year.
The November 2008 issue of Foundation Watch, edited by Matthew Vadum, includes a 15-page article by Mr. Vadum titled ""ACORN: Who Funds the Weather Underground's Little Brother?."
What is ACORN?
Mr. Vadum summarized this way: "The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has become America's most prominent left-wing community group. Little-known until now, ACORN has played a major role in the subprime mortgage mess that has undermined America's support for free market problemk-solving and set off a worldwide chain of financial troubles. It is also implicated in vote fraud schemes from coast to coast. ACORN aims to give America change that socialists can believe in — by any means necessary. It is deliberately organized to avoid scrutiny. But with an FBI probe underway, millions of dollars in back taxes owing, and a racketeering lawsuit pending, it may finally have to answer for its many misdeeds."
It should be so, but with Obama as President, it seems more likely that Bush Justice Department lawyers who approved waterboarding terrorists will be prosecuted for their legal opinion and ACORN will be collecting hundreds of millions of "stimulus" dollars and conducting the 2010 census instead of "answer[ing] for its many misdeeds."
On page 7, Mr. Vadum refuted the Obama claim that his only relationship with ACORN was as a lawyer representing it successfully in a motor voter case in which the United States Justice Department supported ACORN.
Mr. Vadum:
"Senator Barack Obama has tried to distance himself from ACORN. That effort went into high gear beginning in September when ACORN began to receive a mountain of bad publicity relating to nationwide allegations of election fraud. Obama supporters tried to confuse the issue by saying the senator was never an ACORN community organizer, and they say that Project Vote, the voter registration drive that Obama ran in 1992, was never a part of ACORN. (Project Vote itself is now engaged in legalistic hairsplitting, conveniently claiming that it didn't become closely aligned with ACORN until Obama left. Of course, Project Vote has presented no legal documentation to support its claim.)
"At an ACORN-sponsored forum on Dec. 1, 2007, Senator Obama announced that he would meet with ACORN in his first 100 days as U.S. president. He said, 'Before I even get inaugurated, during the transition, we're going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda. We're going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America.
"The month before, Obama said: '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 drives in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.' And during the primaries, the Obama presidential campaign paid $832,598 to Citizen Services Inc., an ACORN affiliate, for get-out-the-vote activities.
"Obama's ties to ACORN go back at least to 1992. That's the year he directed voter registration for Project Vote, an ACORN affiliate. Obama helped train ACORN leaders, and he represented ACORN in ACORN v. Edgar.
"The socialist New Party, which served as ACORN's electoral arm, endorsed Obama, who was one of its members, when he ran for the Illinois state senate in the mid-1990s...."
Mr. Vadum also related how the Obama-ACORN ties were masked during the presidential campaign:
"Of course, ACORN values its close connection to Obama, but when it recognized that public recognition of its tied could hurt him it tried to cover up the association.
"In early October, as media coverage of ACORN election fraud scandals intensified, ACORN removed a smoking gun from one of its websites. This was an article that linked Obama to ACORN and to Project Vote and made clear that the two entities were joined at the hip.
"The 2004 article was by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago-based member of the ACORN national board and now a Chicago alderman, and it appeared in Social Policy, a publication of ACORN's American institute for Social Justice. Extolling Obama's political organizing abilities, Foulkes described the close connections between ACORN and its affiliate, Project Vote. She wrote that ACORN 'invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office.'' So it was only 'natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress.' The upshot? 'By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends.'
"ACORN hadn't counted on resourceful bloggers copying the Foulkes article, which was titled 'Case Study: Chicago-The Barack Obama Campaign.' After weeks of unremitting criticism, the article had been restored to the Social Policy website as of Oct. 18. (The article is available at http://www.capitalresearch.org/blog/?p=1701.)"
With the bulk of the mainstream media helping, fooling a majority of the voters isn't so hard.
© Michael Gaynor
April 23, 2009
On September 12, 2008, New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom emailed ACORN whistleblower (and then confidential Strom source) Anita MonCrief: "...I'm wondering whether you can give me any more details about the Nov. 2007 meeting with the Obama camp. Where did it take place? Who was involved? Any details would help."
As Democrat presidential candidate, then Senator Obama never said (at least in public) that he would transform the United States of America into a socialist society. (He WAS caught on tape, at a private fundraiser in San Francisco, essentially parroting the Marxist line about religion being the opiate of the people, but any promise he made to take over America's banks after his inauguration never appeared on the public radar.)
Candidate Obama was distressed and discombobulated when "Joe the Plumber" astutely replied to him that what he had said sounded like socialism, but he politically survived his chance encounter with "Joe," thanks to the media.
Still, the evidence of Obama radical ties was there to find and National Journal had ranked then Senator Obama as the most liberal United States senator, even more liberal than admitted socialist Bernard Sanders of Vermont.
In order to win the presidency, Obama needed to obfuscate and appear moderate and he needed the liberal media establishment to help him by not reporting everything that voters should have known.
Obama blatantly misrepresented his relationship with ACORN, even in the last presidential debate, and smoothly and softly explained away his other radical associations, while the liberal media establishment paved his path to the White House and lauded him and his spouse.
On September 12, 2008, New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom emailed ACORN whistleblower (and then confidential Strom source) Anita MonCrief: "...I'm wondering whether you can give me any more details about the Nov. 2007 meeting with the Obama camp. Where did it take place? Who was involved? Any details would help."
But, so Ms. Strom told Ms. MonCrief on October 21, 2008, Ms. Strom's editors told her to "stand down" and stopped her from going to Washington, D.C. to meet with Ms. MonCrief because they feared the story that Ms. Strom was working on with Ms. MonCrief might be "a game changer."
Dick Morris titled his latest alarming article "Obama's Leap to Socialism."
Mr. Morris:
"President Obama showed his hand this week when The New York Times wrote that he is considering converting the stock the government owns in our country's banks from preferred stock, which it now holds, to common stock.
"This seemingly insignificant change is momentous. It means that the federal government will control all of the major banks and financial institutions in the nation. It means socialism.
"The Times dutifully dressed up the Obama plan as a way to avoid asking Congress for more money for failing banks. But the implications of the proposal are obvious to anyone who cares to look."
When George W. Bush was still in the White House, socialism in America was held at bay, even during the financial crisis.
Mr. Morris:
"...to avoid the issue of a potential for government control of the banks, everybody agreed that the stock the feds would take back in return for their money would be preferred stock, not common stock. 'Preferred' means that these stockholders get the first crack at dividends, but only common stockholders can actually vote on company management or policy. Now, by changing this fundamental element of the TARP plan, Obama will give Washington a voting majority among the common stockholders of these banks and other financial institutions. The almost 500 companies receiving TARP money will be, in effect, run by Washington.
"And whoever controls the banks controls the credit and, therefore, the economy. That's called socialism."
Of course, President Obama is claiming to be helping the taxpayers, NOT acknowledging that he is remaking America as a socialist society.
Mr. Morris:
"Obama is dressing up the idea of the switch to common stock by noting that the conversion would provide the banks with capital they could use without a further taxpayer appropriation. While this is true, it flies in the face of the fact that an increasing number of big banks and brokerage houses are clamoring to give back the TARP money. Goldman-Sachs, for example, wants to buy back its freedom, as do many banks. Even AIG is selling off assets to dig its way out from under federal control. The reason, of course, is that company executives do not like the restrictions on executive pay and compensation that come with TARP money. It is for this reason that Chrysler Motors refused TARP funds.
"With bank profits up and financial institutions trying to give back their money, there is no need for the conversion of the government stock from preferred to common — except to advance the political socialist agenda of this administration."
Just as The New York Times is promoting the Obama plan to have the federal government control the banks as a boon to taxpayers now, it promoted the Obama presidential campaign and even protected Obama from exposure of his true relationship with ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) last year.
The November 2008 issue of Foundation Watch, edited by Matthew Vadum, includes a 15-page article by Mr. Vadum titled ""ACORN: Who Funds the Weather Underground's Little Brother?."
What is ACORN?
Mr. Vadum summarized this way: "The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has become America's most prominent left-wing community group. Little-known until now, ACORN has played a major role in the subprime mortgage mess that has undermined America's support for free market problemk-solving and set off a worldwide chain of financial troubles. It is also implicated in vote fraud schemes from coast to coast. ACORN aims to give America change that socialists can believe in — by any means necessary. It is deliberately organized to avoid scrutiny. But with an FBI probe underway, millions of dollars in back taxes owing, and a racketeering lawsuit pending, it may finally have to answer for its many misdeeds."
It should be so, but with Obama as President, it seems more likely that Bush Justice Department lawyers who approved waterboarding terrorists will be prosecuted for their legal opinion and ACORN will be collecting hundreds of millions of "stimulus" dollars and conducting the 2010 census instead of "answer[ing] for its many misdeeds."
On page 7, Mr. Vadum refuted the Obama claim that his only relationship with ACORN was as a lawyer representing it successfully in a motor voter case in which the United States Justice Department supported ACORN.
Mr. Vadum:
"Senator Barack Obama has tried to distance himself from ACORN. That effort went into high gear beginning in September when ACORN began to receive a mountain of bad publicity relating to nationwide allegations of election fraud. Obama supporters tried to confuse the issue by saying the senator was never an ACORN community organizer, and they say that Project Vote, the voter registration drive that Obama ran in 1992, was never a part of ACORN. (Project Vote itself is now engaged in legalistic hairsplitting, conveniently claiming that it didn't become closely aligned with ACORN until Obama left. Of course, Project Vote has presented no legal documentation to support its claim.)
"At an ACORN-sponsored forum on Dec. 1, 2007, Senator Obama announced that he would meet with ACORN in his first 100 days as U.S. president. He said, 'Before I even get inaugurated, during the transition, we're going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda. We're going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America.
"The month before, Obama said: '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 drives in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.' And during the primaries, the Obama presidential campaign paid $832,598 to Citizen Services Inc., an ACORN affiliate, for get-out-the-vote activities.
"Obama's ties to ACORN go back at least to 1992. That's the year he directed voter registration for Project Vote, an ACORN affiliate. Obama helped train ACORN leaders, and he represented ACORN in ACORN v. Edgar.
"The socialist New Party, which served as ACORN's electoral arm, endorsed Obama, who was one of its members, when he ran for the Illinois state senate in the mid-1990s...."
Mr. Vadum also related how the Obama-ACORN ties were masked during the presidential campaign:
"Of course, ACORN values its close connection to Obama, but when it recognized that public recognition of its tied could hurt him it tried to cover up the association.
"In early October, as media coverage of ACORN election fraud scandals intensified, ACORN removed a smoking gun from one of its websites. This was an article that linked Obama to ACORN and to Project Vote and made clear that the two entities were joined at the hip.
"The 2004 article was by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago-based member of the ACORN national board and now a Chicago alderman, and it appeared in Social Policy, a publication of ACORN's American institute for Social Justice. Extolling Obama's political organizing abilities, Foulkes described the close connections between ACORN and its affiliate, Project Vote. She wrote that ACORN 'invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office.'' So it was only 'natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress.' The upshot? 'By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends.'
"ACORN hadn't counted on resourceful bloggers copying the Foulkes article, which was titled 'Case Study: Chicago-The Barack Obama Campaign.' After weeks of unremitting criticism, the article had been restored to the Social Policy website as of Oct. 18. (The article is available at http://www.capitalresearch.org/blog/?p=1701.)"
With the bulk of the mainstream media helping, fooling a majority of the voters isn't so hard.
© Michael Gaynor
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(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
