Paulie is especially interested in receiving your telephone calls. So, call (347) 677-0792 and ask Paulie a question or share your comments.

Please join us tonight for our guest, David Alinsky, son of Saul Alinsky, “the father of community organizing.” [SEE more about Saul Alinsky below.] Mr. Alinsky will discuss some of the parallels between the strategies outlined by his father in his seminal 1972 book “Rules for Radicals” and the Obama campaign. We’ll also trace his father’s legacy as a leader and trainer for political and social activism from the 1930s in the Union Stockyards to The Farm Workers and Civil Rights Movements—to the present day.

For anyone wondering why President Obama and his allies are beating up on Rush Limbaugh—Mr. Alinsky will explain his father’s Rule#12. This is fascinating stuff-don’t miss it!

BELOW, David Alinsky’s biography:

David, the only son of Saul Alinsky [PHOTOGRAPH RIGHT], is a computer technical and network consultant for small business and non-profit organizations.  In his local town, he is past chair of the Democratic Committee, is co-chair of the Energy Conservation Committee, and serves as the Assistant Town Registrar.

He holds an MBA from Boston College which led him to work in corporate television in several Fortune 1000 companies.  His BS  in communications from Emerson College, jump started his first career as an in house producer for public television in Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Education.  He has been adjunct faculty at Boston University and Northeastern University, teaching television production with an emphasis on how the medium influences the viewing public.
In the middle of his college years, David served in the US Air Force and completed a tour of duty in Viet Nam in 1969.

David grew up on the south side of Chicago in Hyde Park, and graduated from The University of Chicago’s Laboratory High School (FYI: The Lower “Lab” School is where Barack Obama’s children went to school before moving to DC and where Michelle Obama served on the Board).  

(He is married to Joanne Linowes of  Scarsdale, NY and Washington, DC.  They celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary tomorrow, Feb. 3.  They have three grown children.)

You can learn much more about Saul Alinsky at his Wikipedia entry, including the following:

[...]

Alinsky codified and wrote a clear set of rules[5] for community organizing. His rules for radicals are now used as key tactics to learn in the training of new community organizers and were the tactics used by then candidate Barack Obama to win the 2008 election.

[...]

Alinsky’s teachings influenced Barack Obama in his early career as a community organizer on the far South Side of Chicago.[8][9] Working for Gerald Kellman’s Developing Communities Project, Obama learned and taught Alinsky’s methods for community organizing.[8] Several prominent national leaders have been influenced by Alinsky’s teachings,[8] including Ed Chambers,[6]Tom Gaudette, Michael Gecan, Wade Rathke,[10][11], Patrick Crowley [12], and Barack Obama [13]. …

Last week, Paulie (January 26, 2009), hosted the famous, highly respected, educator and speaker, the Reverend Marcia Dyson. Rev. Dyson was a very active campaigner for Secretary Hillary Clinton during her presidential run.

If you missed Paula’s debut two weeks ago, you’ll definitely want to listen to the archived show, either at BlogTalkRadio.com or via iTunes (see our iTunes download and easy No Quarter Radio subscription directions in the farthest column to your right).

These were Paula’s two guests for the first part of her Monday night show on January 19, 2009:

Janet Margusity is the Director of Marketing for a children’s rehab hospital and long-term care facility in South Jersey. She has been an advocate for children with disabilities and their families for more than 20 years.

In 2004, she ran the South Jersey ‘Meet-Ups’ for John Kerry and in 2007 was part of New Jersey Women for Hillary. After Hillary conceded, Ms. Margusity joined the PUMA movement and became New Jersey State Coordinator for Real Democrats. She is currently working to ensure passage of Louisa’s law to protect battered women.

Media:
“Disaffected Democrats Oppose Obama” — Asbury Press, NJ
DayLife.com

Marilu Sochor has spent the last 20 years as co-owner of a real estate development company in the second largest growing county in the United States.

Ms. Sochor was actively involved in campaigning for Bill Clinton (1990 and 1994), Al Gore (2000), John Kerry (2004) and was an early and active supporter of Hillary Clinton–serving as Delaware (OH) County chair (2007). In 2008, she was the Chairman of ‘Citizens for McCain’ in Ohio. Ms. Sochor is the co-founder of Women for Fair Politics and Real Democrats.

Media:
YouTube
YouTube
Marilu also appeared on FoxNews in October 2008; that video is unavailable.

STEPHEN DIAMOND: I am a lawyer, political scientist and law professor. I teach courses and conduct research on the global capital markets, business law, international human rights and labor law. My blog is Global Labor and Politics. You may read my other posts at NoQuarterUSA.net here.

Obama is clearly losing goodwill points every day that Blago-gate drags on. Now it appears that indeed Rahm Emanuel was in touch with Blago and aide Harris about the senate seat though no evidence yet of malfeasance on Emanuel’s part.

The stench of Chicago machine politics now clings to Obama like a cheap cologne.

It did not have to be this way.

Obama started out his career firmly in the reform anti-Daley machine wing of the Chicago Democratic Party. That’s what it meant to be an Alinsky-ite Community Organizer in black south side poor and working class neighborhoods in the 80s (where, by the way, he first got to know the powerful Balanoff family of Tom Balanoff aka “SEIU Official” – the flag pole contact in the Feds affidavit against Blagojevich).

That’s what it meant to fight the Mayor’s office and the powerful school board and the teachers union simultaneously in the push for a school reform bill in 1988 which Obama did alongside his pal Bill Ayers. And Obama did that in opposition to mainstream black organizations like Operation PUSH and The Woodlawn Organization.

That’s what it meant to join again with Ayers in securing and then spending $160 million on education reform AGAINST the desires of Mayor Daley in what were called the Chicago School Wars. That’s what it meant to hold his initial campaign event in the home of his “family friends” Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. That’s what it meant to step into the shoes of outgoing state rep. and fellow traveler Alice Palmer.

In fact, that’s what it meant if your aspiration in political life, as it was for Obama, was to depose Richard Daley Jr. inspired by Obama’s hero, Harold Washington, the first black mayor of the city who died in office while Obama was a community organizer.

But at some point in the late 90s or so, Obama realized he had higher ambitions and perhaps becoming Chicago Mayor was not enough. At that point he began to establish relationships with the Chicago mainstream, including key business figures like Penny Pritzker and he even began cozying up to the Daley machine itself. These would prove critical in his rise to national prominence

And now he is stuck with them. Instead of taking advantage of his new national ties to the Kennedy family or VP-elect Joe Biden he immediately fell back on the Chicago crowd for his earliest appointments – Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett, for example – while only leaving behind Jeremiah Wright and, hopefully, Billy Ayers.

For whatever reason Democratic Presidents seem too heavily dependent on the home team. Carter had his Georgia buddies as Clinton had his Arkansas cronies. Usually, however, it takes a few years for their inadequacies to shine through. Obama hasn’t even moved to Washington yet!

From my blog, Global Labor and Politics.

MORE ON ALINSKY:

Here’s a brief summary of Saul Alinsky’s relationship to Obama, via Wikipedia:

Alinsky codified and wrote a clear set of rules for community organizing. His rules for radicals are now used as key tactics to learn in the training of new community organizers and were the tactics used by then candidate Barack Obama to win the 2008 election.

[...]

Alinsky’s teachings influenced Barack Obama in his early career as a community organizer on the far South Side of Chicago. Working for Gerald Kellman’s Developing Communities Project, Obama learned and taught Alinsky’s methods for community organizing.

Join Paulie at 9:00 p.m. ET to discuss Saul Alinsky’s legacy at No Quarter Radio!

Here’s a brief summary of Saul Alinsky’s relationship to Obama, via Wikipedia: “Alinsky codified and wrote a clear set of rules for community organizing. His rules for radicals are now used as key tactics to learn in the training of new community organizers and were the tactics used by then candidate Barack Obama to win the 2008 election. [...] Alinsky’s teachings influenced Barack Obama in his early career as a community organizer on the far South Side of Chicago. Working for Gerald Kellman’s Developing Communities Project, Obama learned and taught Alinsky’s methods for community organizing.

The lines of evidence now converge: the founder of ACORN is Wade Rathke, who, like William Ayers, was a member of the Students for a Democratic Society. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the student organization founded in 1960 as part of the New Left, was the gateway drug to the Weather Underground. In the early sixties, the SDS was idealistic and many reluctantly supported Lyndon Johnson for president in 1964, and grainy black-and-white pictures show clean-cut men and women registering southern blacks to vote. Tom Hayden was amongst this group. But that was then.

By 1969, their Great Society liberalism had been co-opted by Marxists, Maoists, Spartacists, and other assorted revolutionary groups. They were no longer interested in change, but overthrowing the government. It was during this time that Wade Rathke first came into contact with Bill Ayers.

Much has been made of Obama’s questionable judgment in befriending and working closely with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers. Regardless of what Obama says, his political career was launched in Ayers’ home, Ayers served with him on Woods Fund, and promoted him to head the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

The founder of ACORN, Wade Rathke, like Ayers, is a disciple of Saul Alinsky. Working for ACORN was an important step in Obama’s political career.

An article by Professor David Walls directly connects Rathke’s ACORN to Alinsky, ACORN’s mission of pressuring banks to issue risky mortgages, and the alliance between ACORN and unions:

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, began in 1970 as a spin-off from the National Welfare Rights Organization, founded by George Wiley, who enlisted civil rights workers and trained them in an Alinsky-influenced program at Syracuse University. From a base in Arkansas, Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado developed a replicable model of forming membership organizations and developing leaders in low-income neighborhoods — relying substantially on young middle-class staff working for subsistence wages. ACORN has established local housing corporations to rehabilitate homes, and has successfully pressured banks to provide mortgages and home improvement loans in low-income communities. ACORN has led “living wage” campaigns in many cities, and has forged alliances with labor unions.

But ACORN isn’t just Alinsky-inspired. It’s a direct off-shoot of his revolutionary agenda:

Around 1970 several national networks began to coalesce and develop systematic and distinctive approaches to community organizing. These include the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), ACORN, Citizen Action, National People’s Action, PICO, DART, and the Gamaliel Foundation. Each was indebted, in greater or lesser degree, to Alinsky and his early organizing programs in Chicago through IAF.

Citizen Action, mentioned above, is not “officially” connected to ACORN. But Citizen Action, like Rathke’s ACORN and Ayers’ radical education projects, was founded by another member of the Alinsky-SDS milieu, Heather Booth. But it’s not just SDS and the City of Chicago that binds this group. As the screen capture below shows, Heather Booth’s husband was both a member of the SDS and Alinski’s [sic] Industrial Areas Foundation.

Of equal significance, Citizen Action reported paying Citizen Services, Inc., the shadowy ACORN group first exposed at No Quarter, over half a million dollars for campaign work. This is the Citizen Services, Inc. who has received nearly a million dollars from the Obama campaign:

(Expenditure reports also show an October 18 payment to Citizen Services (ACORN) of $590,526.10 for “Campaign consulting.” This is not enough information to determine whether this payment was also for signature gathering, which would make the per-signature cost ludicrously high, or for get-out-the-vote activities, or something else.)

According to the Associated Press, the FBI is now investigating allegations of voter fraud committed by ACORN. It should come as no surprise that ACORN is steeped in a culture of corruption, and the manipulative actions of ACORN dovetail perfectly with Alinsky’s Rules. Wade Rathke, founder of ACORN, was forced out the organization after his brother, Dale Rathke, embezzled more than $948,000 from ACORN and Wade Rathke covered it up. His brother was running one of the 294 ACORN groups which Larry Johnson discovered are all linked through the same address:

139. CITIZENS CONSULTING INC.
1024 ELYSIAN FIELDS AVE
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70117-8402 NON-PROFIT FOREIGN CORPORATION Name Type:LEGAL
Status:ACTIVE
Indiana Secretary of State

The New York Times reports:

The amount Dale Rathke embezzled, $948,607.50, was carried as a loan on the books of Citizens Consulting Inc., which provides bookkeeping, accounting and other financial management services to Acorn and many of its affiliated entities.

Wade Rathke, prior to Obama’s rapid ascent, was formulating ways to converge the Alinsky Left and take control of the power of the state. This was written in January 2003. He begins his essay with the classic exhortations of a Bolshevik pamphleteer, and his words could not be any clearer:

The oldest cliché of our vast peoples’ movement over the last generation or more has got to be that there are so, so many tasks to be done, that there is a job for everyone – and that means, you, too, brothers and sisters!

~snip~

So, you sit here reading this on the fly between one job and another, home and school, heaven and hell, and you say, “hey, bullshit, no way:” every ad for an “activist” is just looking for a canvasser; all of these groups are just gangs with their own cliques – another secret handshake high school behind a storefront window; and, so, you say, what does it matter what I have to say, what I think, or whatever – I’ll just do my thing, my way, and live my life out of the mainstream

Here’s my plea – let’s build a bridge in the sky that links our worlds together, while allowing us to stay autonomous and anonymous.

First, why, and then, how.

The power of the state is in fact fairly awesome.

Dr. Lynette Long has taken an extended sabbatical while she works on getting healthier and gets much-needed rest.

Paulie is especially interested in receiving your telephone calls. So, call (347) 677-0792 and ask Paulie a question or share your comments.

Please join us tonight for our guest, David Alinsky, son of Saul Alinsky, “the father of community organizing.” [SEE more about Saul Alinsky below.] Mr. Alinsky will discuss some of the parallels between the strategies outlined by his father in his seminal 1972 book “Rules for Radicals” and the Obama campaign. We’ll also trace his father’s legacy as a leader and trainer for political and social activism from the 1930s in the Union Stockyards to The Farm Workers and Civil Rights Movements—to the present day.

For anyone wondering why President Obama and his allies are beating up on Rush Limbaugh—Mr. Alinsky will explain his father’s Rule#12. This is fascinating stuff-don’t miss it!

BELOW, David Alinsky’s biography:

David, the only son of Saul Alinsky [PHOTOGRAPH RIGHT], is a computer technical and network consultant for small business and non-profit organizations.  In his local town, he is past chair of the Democratic Committee, is co-chair of the Energy Conservation Committee, and serves as the Assistant Town Registrar.

He holds an MBA from Boston College which led him to work in corporate television in several Fortune 1000 companies.  His BS  in communications from Emerson College, jump started his first career as an in house producer for public television in Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Education.  He has been adjunct faculty at Boston University and Northeastern University, teaching television production with an emphasis on how the medium influences the viewing public.
In the middle of his college years, David served in the US Air Force and completed a tour of duty in Viet Nam in 1969.

David grew up on the south side of Chicago in Hyde Park, and graduated from The University of Chicago’s Laboratory High School (FYI: The Lower “Lab” School is where Barack Obama’s children went to school before moving to DC and where Michelle Obama served on the Board).  

(He is married to Joanne Linowes of  Scarsdale, NY and Washington, DC.  They celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary tomorrow, Feb. 3.  They have three grown children.)

You can learn much more about Saul Alinsky at his Wikipedia entry, including the following:

[...]

Alinsky codified and wrote a clear set of rules[5] for community organizing. His rules for radicals are now used as key tactics to learn in the training of new community organizers and were the tactics used by then candidate Barack Obama to win the 2008 election.

[...]

Alinsky’s teachings influenced Barack Obama in his early career as a community organizer on the far South Side of Chicago.[8][9] Working for Gerald Kellman’s Developing Communities Project, Obama learned and taught Alinsky’s methods for community organizing.[8] Several prominent national leaders have been influenced by Alinsky’s teachings,[8] including Ed Chambers,[6]Tom Gaudette, Michael Gecan, Wade Rathke,[10][11], Patrick Crowley [12], and Barack Obama [13]. …

Last week, Paulie (January 26, 2009), hosted the famous, highly respected, educator and speaker, the Reverend Marcia Dyson. Rev. Dyson was a very active campaigner for Secretary Hillary Clinton during her presidential run.

If you missed Paula’s debut two weeks ago, you’ll definitely want to listen to the archived show, either at BlogTalkRadio.com or via iTunes (see our iTunes download and easy No Quarter Radio subscription directions in the farthest column to your right).

These were Paula’s two guests for the first part of her Monday night show on January 19, 2009:

Janet Margusity is the Director of Marketing for a children’s rehab hospital and long-term care facility in South Jersey. She has been an advocate for children with disabilities and their families for more than 20 years.

In 2004, she ran the South Jersey ‘Meet-Ups’ for John Kerry and in 2007 was part of New Jersey Women for Hillary. After Hillary conceded, Ms. Margusity joined the PUMA movement and became New Jersey State Coordinator for Real Democrats. She is currently working to ensure passage of Louisa’s law to protect battered women.

Media:
“Disaffected Democrats Oppose Obama” — Asbury Press, NJ
DayLife.com

Marilu Sochor has spent the last 20 years as co-owner of a real estate development company in the second largest growing county in the United States.

Ms. Sochor was actively involved in campaigning for Bill Clinton (1990 and 1994), Al Gore (2000), John Kerry (2004) and was an early and active supporter of Hillary Clinton–serving as Delaware (OH) County chair (2007). In 2008, she was the Chairman of ‘Citizens for McCain’ in Ohio. Ms. Sochor is the co-founder of Women for Fair Politics and Real Democrats.

Media:
YouTube
YouTube
Marilu also appeared on FoxNews in October 2008; that video is unavailable.

I will vote Obama
I will vote for a man I know nothing about

I will vote because it is time for a black man in the White House

I will vote for a man I really haven’t researched, and I really don’t want to know anything bad about

Because I will feel noble and good that I voted for a black man

or a man who definitely is NOT George Bush

I will vote for a man whose mother left America on purpose and stated the Americans around her in Indonesia were “not her people”

I will vote for a man whose father and stepfather were not Americans or Christians even though I felt uncomfortable about that Romney fellow and his Mormonism

I will vote for a man whose father figure mentor in Hawaii was a communist and hated America and “white oppression”

I will vote for a community organizer, even though I don’t know what that is

Saul Alinksy is the creator of the community organizer concept

I will not Google Saul Alinsky

I will not Google ACORN

I will vote for a man who ran unopposed for his Illinois State Senate Seat

I will not Google how that happened to occur

I will vote for a man who allies himself with an unrepentant radical terrorist

But he is an “education reformer” now!

I will not Google Bill Ayers enough to find out what he wants to reform public education into

although my children go to public schools

I will vote for a man who listened to Reverend Jeremiah Wright for 20 years

I certainly will NOT Google Black Liberation theology, white oppression, and Marxism in the same search!

I will feel good about myself after I vote Obama

who is not George Bush

I will feel good that America voted for Obama

I will await the praise from the world’s opinion of us on our wise choice…

I will be surprised when they still hate us

I will be surprised when I start to hate who I voted for

I will vote “anybody but Obama” in 2012

The lines of evidence now converge: the founder of ACORN is Wade Rathke, who, like William Ayers, was a member of the Students for a Democratic Society. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the student organization founded in 1960 as part of the New Left, was the gateway drug to the Weather Underground. In the early sixties, the SDS was idealistic and many reluctantly supported Lyndon Johnson for president in 1964, and grainy black-and-white pictures show clean-cut men and women registering southern blacks to vote. Tom Hayden was amongst this group. But that was then.

By 1969, their Great Society liberalism had been co-opted by Marxists, Maoists, Spartacists, and other assorted revolutionary groups. They were no longer interested in change, but overthrowing the government. It was during this time that Wade Rathke first came into contact with Bill Ayers.

Much has been made of Obama’s questionable judgment in befriending and working closely with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers. Regardless of what Obama says, his political career was launched in Ayers’ home, Ayers served with him on Woods Fund, and promoted him to head the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

The founder of ACORN, Wade Rathke, like Ayers, is a disciple of Saul Alinsky. Working for ACORN was an important step in Obama’s political career.

An article by Professor David Walls directly connects Rathke’s ACORN to Alinsky, ACORN’s mission of pressuring banks to issue risky mortgages, and the alliance between ACORN and unions:

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, began in 1970 as a spin-off from the National Welfare Rights Organization, founded by George Wiley, who enlisted civil rights workers and trained them in an Alinsky-influenced program at Syracuse University. From a base in Arkansas, Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado developed a replicable model of forming membership organizations and developing leaders in low-income neighborhoods — relying substantially on young middle-class staff working for subsistence wages. ACORN has established local housing corporations to rehabilitate homes, and has successfully pressured banks to provide mortgages and home improvement loans in low-income communities. ACORN has led “living wage” campaigns in many cities, and has forged alliances with labor unions.

But ACORN isn’t just Alinsky-inspired. It’s a direct off-shoot of his revolutionary agenda:

Around 1970 several national networks began to coalesce and develop systematic and distinctive approaches to community organizing. These include the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), ACORN, Citizen Action, National People’s Action, PICO, DART, and the Gamaliel Foundation. Each was indebted, in greater or lesser degree, to Alinsky and his early organizing programs in Chicago through IAF.

Citizen Action, mentioned above, is not “officially” connected to ACORN. But Citizen Action, like Rathke’s ACORN and Ayers’ radical education projects, was founded by another member of the Alinsky-SDS milieu, Heather Booth. But it’s not just SDS and the City of Chicago that binds this group. As the screen capture below shows, Heather Booth’s husband was both a member of the SDS and Alinski’s [sic] Industrial Areas Foundation.

Of equal significance, Citizen Action reported paying Citizen Services, Inc., the shadowy ACORN group first exposed at No Quarter, over half a million dollars for campaign work. This is the Citizen Services, Inc. who has received nearly a million dollars from the Obama campaign:

(Expenditure reports also show an October 18 payment to Citizen Services (ACORN) of $590,526.10 for “Campaign consulting.” This is not enough information to determine whether this payment was also for signature gathering, which would make the per-signature cost ludicrously high, or for get-out-the-vote activities, or something else.)

According to the Associated Press, the FBI is now investigating allegations of voter fraud committed by ACORN. It should come as no surprise that ACORN is steeped in a culture of corruption, and the manipulative actions of ACORN dovetail perfectly with Alinsky’s Rules. Wade Rathke, founder of ACORN, was forced out the organization after his brother, Dale Rathke, embezzled more than $948,000 from ACORN and Wade Rathke covered it up. His brother was running one of the 294 ACORN groups which Larry Johnson discovered are all linked through the same address:

139. CITIZENS CONSULTING INC.
1024 ELYSIAN FIELDS AVE
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70117-8402 NON-PROFIT FOREIGN CORPORATION Name Type:LEGAL
Status:ACTIVE
Indiana Secretary of State

The New York Times reports:

The amount Dale Rathke embezzled, $948,607.50, was carried as a loan on the books of Citizens Consulting Inc., which provides bookkeeping, accounting and other financial management services to Acorn and many of its affiliated entities.

Wade Rathke, prior to Obama’s rapid ascent, was formulating ways to converge the Alinsky Left and take control of the power of the state. This was written in January 2003. He begins his essay with the classic exhortations of a Bolshevik pamphleteer, and his words could not be any clearer:

The oldest cliché of our vast peoples’ movement over the last generation or more has got to be that there are so, so many tasks to be done, that there is a job for everyone – and that means, you, too, brothers and sisters!

~snip~

So, you sit here reading this on the fly between one job and another, home and school, heaven and hell, and you say, “hey, bullshit, no way:” every ad for an “activist” is just looking for a canvasser; all of these groups are just gangs with their own cliques – another secret handshake high school behind a storefront window; and, so, you say, what does it matter what I have to say, what I think, or whatever – I’ll just do my thing, my way, and live my life out of the mainstream

Here’s my plea – let’s build a bridge in the sky that links our worlds together, while allowing us to stay autonomous and anonymous.

First, why, and then, how.

The power of the state is in fact fairly awesome.

Everyone here has heard most of the elements of the post presented below. Some have even talked about the theory presented therein. Before you get bored and skip some of the rehashing, remember this. NoQuarter attracts more new viewers these days than Oberburp has in the past year. The new visitors deserve full qualification of facts, people and events before they can digest theories. This is a long post, but one worth reading.

Therefore I suggest that the following article, written by a kindergarten teacher, should be read by us and shared with anyone who is light Obama or center fence. There are two things amazing I find about people who will dedicate their lives to teaching five year old kids. One. They have to find a smile, every Monday through Friday Morning, before they greet the kids. Two. They get to hear the greatest questions about subjects we quit questioning.

One last thing. This kindergarten teacher is a man who joined me, and a lot of other people, to create the June 19th Seneca160 project, honoring Hillary. I am not discussing her now. I just want you to take in Shtu’s thinking. Get off the minute-by-minute news for a moment and provoke some thought. You might just find a way to create convincing posts, on your own blogs, that will move some votes.

NQ is The blog of bloggers.

- Eastan McNeal

Now. For Shtuey’s Piece

At the outset I must thank Ms Placed Democrat’s Renaissancelady 48 and Eastan McNeal at No Quarter for their exhaustive research, love of country, and wise counsel.

How did we get here? How is it that “subprime mortgages” have brought us to the brink of economic collapse? Most people believe it is due to the predatory lending practices of financial institutions. That is the lie you have been sold. The truth is far more insidious. We are in fact on the brink of economic disaster because of the people who have sent Barack Obama.

In order to understand how this happened we must begin with Saul Alinsky , the radical socialist who, after spending a great deal of time with the Al Capone crime family in Chicago, realized that the same shakedown tactics used by the mob to extort business, and control politicians, could be used by activists to shakedown banks and political institutions to advance a socialist agenda.

These were tactics utilized by groups like ACORN, in an effort to lobby the government to pass laws that forced lending institutions to issue mortgages to low income/”at risk” borrowers who often had no way of paying the money back.

But ACORN members probably did not lobby for these laws to bring down our economy, at least not knowingly. I believe that, apart from the leaders at the top, rank and file ACORN members legitimately believed they were fighting for low-income housing. But ACORN’s backers were simply using Alinsky’s method (never reveal your real agenda) to serve their own purposes.

Who are these people? You know the names of two of them: Bill Ayers and Barack Obama. I suspect that they are more front men than anything else, though who knows who Ayers was with while he was in hiding?

Where did ACORN get the funds to engage in the widespread lobbying (read extortion) that allowed them to shakedown lenders and politicians?

From the money diverted to them by Bill Ayers and Barack Obama, via the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and the Woods Fund, as well as with your tax dollars allocated by Congressional Democrats; the same Congressional Democrats that have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Freddie and Fannie in the form of campaign contributions; the same Congressional Democrats that ignored Republican calls for the regulating and reform of Freddie and Fannie — the institutions that took subprime mortgages, bundled them, and infected financial institutions worldwide … all in the name of granting minorities and low income families access to housing (always the trouble begins with the most honorable of intentions, or at least it is made to seem so), but with the Leftists’ hidden purpose of initiating a worldwide economic collapse.

All of it was accomplished with ACORN as the muscle.

The root of the problem lies with the Community Reinvestment Act. The CRA was passed in 1977 and, according to Thomas J. DiLorenzo,

“compels banks to make loans to low-income borrowers and in what the supporters of the Act call “communities of color” that they might not otherwise make based on purely economic criteria.”

DiLorenzo goes on to explain:

The original lobbyists for the CRA were the hardcore leftists who supported the Carter administration and were often rewarded for their support with government grants and programs like the CRA that they benefited from. These included various “neighborhood organizations,” as they like to call themselves, such as “ACORN” (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). These organizations claim that over

$1 trillion in CRA loans have been made, although no one seems to know the magnitude with much certainty.

A U.S. Senate Banking Committee staffer told me about ten years ago that at least $100 billion in such loans had been made in the first twenty years of the Act.

So-called “community groups” like ACORN benefit themselves from the CRA through a process that sounds like legalized extortion. The CRA is enforced by four federal government bureaucracies: the Fed, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The law is set up so that any bank merger, branch expansion, or new branch creation can be postponed or prohibited by any of these four bureaucracies if a CRA “protest” is issued by a “community group.” This can cost banks great sums of money, and the “community groups” understand this perfectly well.

It is their leverage. They use this leverage to get the banks to give them millions of dollars as well as promising to make a certain amount of bad loans in their communities.

A man named Bruce Marks became quite notorious during the last decade for pressuring banks to earmark literally billions of dollars to his organization, the “Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America.” He once boasted to the New York Times that he had “won” loan commitments totaling $3.8 billion from Bank of America, First Union Corporation, and the Fleet Financial Group. And that is just one “community group” operating in one city – Boston.

Banks have been placed in a Catch 22 situation by the CRA: If they comply, they know they will have to suffer from more loan defaults. If they don’t comply, they face financial penalties and, worse yet, their business plans for mergers, branch expansions, etc. can be blocked by CRA protesters, which can cost a large corporation like Bank of America billions of dollars. Like most businesses, they have largely buckled under and have surrendered to their bureaucratic masters.

Consequently, banks in every community in America have been forced to hold a portfolio of bad loans, euphemistically referred to as “subprime” loans. In order to compensate themselves for the added risk of extending these loans, many lenders have increased the lending fees associated with mortgage loans. This is simply an indirect way of doing what banks always do – and what they must do to remain solvent: charging effectively higher rates of interest on riskier loans.

But this is discriminatory!, complained the “community organizations.” Thus, if one browses the ACORN web site, one can read of their boasts of having “predatory lending laws” passed in numerous states which outlaw such fees, prohibiting banks from protecting themselves from the added risk involved in making forced loans to “subprime” borrowers.

According to the Consumer Rights League :

• ACORN leveraged the Community Reinvestment Act in order to attack lenders’ reputations and secure financial resources for itself; it has also endorsed loans offered by companies that fund ACORN operations
• ACORN’s decades of lobbying and publicity seeking have contributed to the current housing crisis by lowering lending standards
• Despite raking in a troubling 40 percent of its revenue from taxpayers over the last three years, ACORN Housing Corporation’s actions range from controversial to borderline illegal:
  • AHC has worked to obtain mortgages for undocumented workers
  • AHC relies on undocumented income, “under the table” money that may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service
  • ACORN’s “financial justice” operations attack lenders for “exotic” loans, but AHC has recommended ten-year interest-only loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and reverse mortgages (which can be detrimental to senior citizens)
  • AHC may have violated federal law by failing to maintain a proper distinction between its tax-exempt housing work and the aggressive political activities of ACORN.

CRL goes on to report:

To understand the current subprime credit mess is to glimpse a world in which a politically active organization with a non-profit housing arm reaps millions of dollars through “rent seeking” or manipulation of favorable laws. ACORN and its non-profit housing arm have taken in millions of taxpayer and corporate dollars by abusing a three-decade-old law intended to help the poor obtain housing. For decades, the activist organization known as ACORN has grabbed headlines—and cash—by attacking mortgage lenders in the name of citizens’ rights. Considerably less attention has been paid to the amount of taxpayer money that funds ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC) and to the financial rewards ACORN has amassed.

But from whom did ACORN learn these Alinsky tactics? In part, from Barack Obama.

As I said earlier, I believe rank and file ACORN members legitimately believe they are lobbying for minority and low income housing, unknowingly advancing a larger agenda to destroy our economic and financial institutions. But how has the cabal managed to infect the credit market worldwide? Let’s ask Penny Pritzker,

Barack Obama’s campaign finance chair.

It is now well documented that Pritzker was one of the driving forces behind the subprime mortgage fiasco, unleashing toxic loans into the market like a financial Typhoid Mary. Her bank, Superior, was the first to go under, and yet she made millions.

From Dennis Bernstein’s report:

Though Superior Bank collapsed years before the current sub-prime turmoil that is rocking the world’s financial markets – and pushing those millions of homeowners toward foreclosure – some banking experts say the Pritzkers and Superior hold a special place in the history of the sub-prime fiasco.

“The [sub-prime] financial engineering that created the Wall Street meltdown was developed by the Pritzkers and Ernst and Young, working with Merrill Lynch to sell bonds securitized by sub-prime mortgages,” Timothy J. Anderson, a whistleblower on financial and bank fraud, told me in an interview.

“The sub-prime mortgages,” Anderson said, “were provided to Merrill Lynch, by a nation-wide Pritzker origination system, using Superior as the cash cow, with many millions in FDIC insured deposits. Superior’s owners were to sub-prime lending, what Michael Milken was to junk bonds.”

In other words, if you traced today’s sub-prime crisis back to its origins, you would come upon the role of the Pritzkers and Superior Bank of Chicago.

Only a fool would believe that it is a coincidence that a man who helped train ACORN in the use of Alinsky tactics, and with Bill Ayers helped fund ACORN, selected the originator of the subprime mortgage vehicle that is destroying our economy to be his campaign finance chair.

But what was the lightbulb moment?

What was the missing piece of the puzzle?

It didn’t start falling into place for me until John McCain announced his mortgage rescue plan at the second Presidential debate.

Inspired by Hillary Clinton’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal, McCain is advancing what is essentially FDR’s Home Owners Loan Corporation idea that kept millions of Americans in their homes. It is a proven plan for success.

But Obama rejects it. Not only does he reject it, but Obama does so based on conservative talking points, namely that McCain’s plan would reward institutions’ unethical practices; practices that banks were forced to adopt because of ACORN’s coercive lobbying efforts, the passage of the CRA, and a mortgage vehicle essentially invented by his campaign finance chair. But in this rejection Obama strays from his usual modus operandi.

As we saw in the primaries, when the opposition issues a plan, Obama waits a few days and then announces the same plan. The media praise him and everyone genuflects. The most notable example of this was when Senator Clinton advocated a multibillion dollar stimulus package in the spring. One week later Obama released a virtually identical plan. Not so this time.

Not only has Obama rejected a plan originally put forward by a Democratic President, he has offered no solution of his own.

Why? Because Barack Obama needs economic turmoil to get into office.

It is the one thing that has opened any polling advantage for Obama in the election. And once in office the nationalization of our banking system will be easily executed. Treasury Secretary Paulson is already laying the groundwork by advocating the government purchase of bank stock.

Once in control of America’s financial institutions, it would be very easy, under the guise of halting the current economic crisis, to completely nationalize American banks and begin a widespread socialist wealth redistribution program which has been part of the Ayers/Obama agenda since the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Crazy? Here’s what Ayers said at an education forum in Venezuela, in the presence of Hugo Chavez:

“the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez.

“We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . .”

“Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions large and small. La educacion es revolution.”

Read what Jon Markman has to say on the ramifications of Obama’s economic and tax policies. And take a look at a recent survey of CEOs.

These people are very concerned with job creation.

They require a President whose policies will allow them, in a weakened economy, to generate the jobs that will put Americans back to work, and drive the economic engine forward. Not only do they feel that McCain’s policies will allow them to generate those jobs, they overwhelmingly fear an Obama presidency. CEOs know what any fool should know; government does not create jobs (the lie that Obama tells us), companies and corporations create jobs; in a capitalist society.

And consider what is happening between Great Britain and Iceland. Interesting that British banks, that ended up being bought up by Iceland, secretly held ACORN assets. It’s a new world order after all. Eastan McNeal goes on to explain:

The first step toward ensuring that the goal of everyone equally owning everything is to first make sure that nobody owns anything. The only path to a functioning socialist democracy is through a temporary trip through a communist demise. In other words, every corporation and entrepreneur must be eliminated and their personal empires destroyed and turned over to the single payer-payee government larges before the collective wealth of the world can be redistributed and shared equally with and for all.

Obama is using home foreclosures, job loss, and economic collapse as a means of gaining power for himself and his backers; the most prominent, and the one who stands to gain the most, George Soros, makes money in part by destablizing foreign currencies as he did in Thailand in 1997.

Obama wants to win the White House on the back of your suffering while George Soros stands to make a killing.

The end result? A socialist takeover of financial institutions to effect a redistribution of wealth in any mode they please.

Do you trust a man who bought a $1.3 million mansion, with the help of a convicted felon, to equally redistribute the world’s wealth?

Would you trust a man who gained his party’s nomination through voter suppression and intimidation, and who voted to continue a regime of warrantless wire tapping, to preserve democracy?

No, me neither. That’s not leadership. That’s not change we can believe in.

Oh, and check out the freshman Senator from Illinois promising that ACORN will help him set his presidential agenda (and read Larry Johnson’s post on Sunday, “Barack Worked For ACORN, Promises to Do So Again.”

There is only one sure thing standing in the way of a leftist takeover of our financial institutions, and possibly the ending of democracy as we know it;

electing John McCain President of the United States on November 4th.

Speaking of Obama and ACORN, it’s about time the McCain campaign spoke up about what we’ve been saying for months:

Click here to visit Shtuey’s blog and read this post WITH links. NQ regulars know where the links go. New visitors, visit Shtu and come back and comment with us.

UPDATE: BELOW is the video of that angry voter speaking to John McCain at the McCain/Palin townhall rally yesterday + some great commentary on why this voter is so angry. And check out the news stories today on voters’ anger.

Did you see this guy? He was on fire! The commentary following is excellent:

::::::::::::::::

Thanks to the reader (sorry I don’t know which of you) who posted the Lou Dobbs video link. Someone e-mailed me the link you posted.

OPEN THREAD.

Before ACORN became a household name, Larry Johnson and Eastan McNeal reported that the Obama campaign has been funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to a shady ACORN shell corporation called Citizens Services, Inc. New information, including the photo above, proves that Obama’s past denials of his relationship with ACORN are not the truth.

According to the Leftist Dissent Magazine, the nebulous term, “community organizing,” has shaped Barack Obama:

Although he didn’t make community organizing a lifetime career—he left Chicago to attend Harvard Law School—Obama often says that his organizing experience has shaped his approach to politics.

~snip~

Since embarking on a political career, Obama hasn’t forgotten the lessons that he learned on the streets of Chicago.

Although Obama claims to never have been associated with ACORN, except when he was retained as their attorney, his community organizing experience is indistinguishable from ACORN’s mission:

In 1985, at age 23, Obama was hired by the Developing Communities Project, a coalition of churches on Chicago’s South Side, to help empower residents to win improved playgrounds, after-school programs, job training, housing, and other concerns affecting a neighborhood hurt by large-scale layoffs from the nearby steel mills and neglect by banks, retail stores, and the local government.

ACORN’s mission is to force governments and businesses, by threat of lawsuits and harassment, to support their agenda of obtaining the maximum services from government, coercing corporations to finance their projects, and forcing banks to approve high-risk loans. Additionally, ACORN works on voter registration issues and is suspected in mass voter fraud. This should be of special concern to the supporters of Hillary Clinton, many of whom witnessed caucus fraud during the primary season.

Stanley Kurtz details that ACORN may be at fault for much of the housing crisis we are now experiencing. Kurtz writes:

While the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act did call on banks to increase lending in poor and minority neighborhoods, its exact requirements were vague, and therefore open to a good deal of regulatory interpretation. Banks merger or expansion plans were rarely held up under CRA until the late 1980s, when ACORN perfected its technique of filing CRA complaints in tandem with the sort of intimidation tactics perfected by that original “community organizer” (and Obama idol), Saul Alinsky.

Kurtz states that Obama, in his position on the board of the Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) — both with domestic terrorist and Obama benefactor Bill Ayers — funneled large sums of money to ACORN:

as a director at Chicago’s Woods Fund, Obama was successfully pushing for a major expansion of assistance to Acorn, and sending still more money Acorn’s way from his post as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Through both funding and personal-leadership training, Obama supported Acorn. And Acorn, far more than we’ve recognized up to now, had a major role in precipitating the subprime crisis.

It’s become apparent that ACORN is serving as Obama’s red-shirted shock troops for voter “outreach,” a euphemism for the mass voter registration fraud witnessed up to this point in the election. ACORN will do for voting integrity what they did for mortgage lending.

According to Obama’s “Fight the Smears” Web Site, he was never an organizer for ACORN:

Regardless of what the Web site says, Obama’s ties to ACORN go much further than simply writing the group large checks from CAC in his role as Bill Ayers’ toady. Although “Fight the Smears” says that Obama was not an organizer for ACORN, he was an attorney for an ACORN’s voter registration project.

However, in May of this year, Stanley Kurtz discovered that Obama and ACORN have a much closer connection:

While most press accounts imply that Obama just happened to be at the sort of public-interest law firm that would take Acorn’s “motor voter” case, Foulkes claims that Acorn specifically sought out Obama’s representation in the motor voter case, remembering Obama from the days when he worked with Talbot. And while many reports speak of Obama’s post-law school role organizing “Project VOTE” in 1992, Foulkes makes it clear that this project was undertaken in direct partnership with Acorn. Foulkes then stresses Obama’s yearly service as a key figure in Acorn’s leadership-training seminars.

Further, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, elaborates that Obama was an attorney for ACORN, trained ACORN activists, and dispensed funds to ACORN:

In 1995, then GOP Gov. Jim Edgar refused to implement the federal “Motor Voter” law. Allowing voters to register using only a postcard and blocking the state from culling voter rolls, he argued, could invite fraud. Mr. Obama sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and won. Acorn later invited Mr. Obama to help train its staff; Mr. Obama would also sit on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago, which frequently gave this group grants.

Kurtz lays the collapse of the mortgage giants squarely at the feet of ACORN:

Up to now, conventional wisdom on the financial meltdown has relegated ACORN and the CRA to bit parts. The real problem, we’ve been told, lay with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, however, ACORN is at the base of the whole mess. ACORN used CRA and Democratic sympathizers to entangle Fannie and Freddie and the entire financial system in a disastrous disregard of the most basic financial standards. And Barack Obama cut his teeth as an organizer and politician backing up ACORN’s economic madness every step of the way.

In a prescient article from 1998, entitled Capitalist Wealth Underwrites Assaults on Middle America’s Values, Robert Holland reports that ACORN received funding from Fannie Mae and other banks and that ACORN then pressured the federal government to force banks to make high-risk loans:

Corporate leaders may be dispensing this aid in the belief it will curry favor with radical groups, or they may calculate that regulation will favor their business’ interests over competitors. Some of the giving, however, just seems spectacularly misguided: For example, Bank America, Chase Manhattan, and Fannie Mae contributed $315,000 to ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), an outfit that threatens financial institutions with federal sanctions if they fail to issue high-risk loans at bargain rates to borrowers of ACORN’s choosing.

Matthew Weaver originally uncovered this photograph of Obama and The Rev. Michael L. Pfleger protesting payday loans in January 2000.

The caption from NBC 5 photograph does not detail who sponsored the protest. It’s striking, however, that one of ACORN’s primary missions is protesting payday loans. And the yellow signs are ubiquitous in nearly all photographs of ACORN from this period:

The caption reads: “ACORN members demand fair lending, not predatory lending! This march was part of ACORN’s National Convention in Philadelphia, Summer 2000.”

The protest in Chicago attended by Obama and The Rev. Pfleger was likely an ACORN-related event, and significant enough for Pfleger to list the protest on his Curriculum Vitae:

What’s interesting about Pfleger’s CV, in addition to the prominence placed on the lending protest, are the other two actions. In a period of one month, Pfleger was actively attempting to ban Indian bidis cigarettes (with Obama) and coordinating efforts with Rev. Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam.

But Obama’s ties with Pfleger did not end with fighting payday loans and exotic cigarettes, Pfleger is close to Farrakhan and Obama attended Farrakhan’s Million Man March:

Obama was apparently at Farrakhan’s Million Man March, although his precise attitude toward the march is in dispute

Regardless of Obama’s proximity to Farrakhan, he continues to embrace the resurgent far-Left.

Dissent reports that Obama employs Marshall Ganz of Harvard to lead “Camp Obama,” a Saul Alinsky-inspired, ACORN-like retreat for the training of Obama organizers:

Obama enlisted Marshall Ganz, a Harvard professor who is one of the country’s leading organizing theorists and practitioners, to help train organizers and volunteers as a key component of his presidential campaign. Ganz was instrumental in shaping the volunteer training experience.

Many Obama campaign volunteers went through several days of intense training sessions called “Camp Obama.” The sessions were led by Ganz and other experienced organizers

Ganz is a respected organizer and academic with long-term associations with ACORN. He was also a member of the Howard Dean campaign.

In an article last year on Talking Points Memo, Ganz notes that recent elections have been remarkably close and that organizing will decide this year’s election. Using Alinsky as his model, he proposes a grass-roots campaign to win in 2008.

Barack Obama, a man we know little truth about, was forced onto the Democratic Party by far-Left activists and obsequious Party elders. ACORN is engaged in fraudulent voter registration on behalf of Obama, and the leader of “Camp Obama” tells us clearly that this election will be about organizing. Obama’s close relationship with ACORN, as documented by Kurtz,

a bit of digging into Obama’s years in the Illinois State Senate indicates strong concern with Acorn’s signature issues, as well as meetings with Acorn and the introduction by Obama of Acorn-friendly legislation on the living wage and banking practices. You begin to wonder whether, in his Springfield days, Obama might have best been characterized as “the Senator from Acorn.”

This is a frightening thought when you consider that ACORN is much to blame for the housing crisis we’re now experiencing. And it’s not surprising that the Obama campaign’s strong-arm tactics, inspired by Alinsky and perfected by ACORN, have made the Democratic Party foreign to so many of its loyal base.