Turn down your speakers…it goes fast, so pay attention.

I would have preferred this video not to be a McCain ad (not endorsed), simply because I don’t think it’s necessary.  People just need the facts, and then they can decide for themselves which candidate supports ‘more of the same’.

I also wish that the video would have touched on ACORN’s involvement in this entire mess.  The more I dig into this, the more I see how a group of ‘community organizers’ can–within a matter of two decades–create the biggest economic disaster this country has ever seen.

Blame for the current financial crisis has been leveled at Wall Street greed, deregulation, and the free-market system. However, government policies – formulated and promoted more than 30 years ago by community organizations like those affiliated with Barack Obama – are the root cause of the problem.

Economists and financial experts interviewed pointed especially to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) and the Associated Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) as major culprits.

Thomas DiLorenzo, Ph.D., an economics professor at Loyola College in Maryland, who specializes in housing finance, said, “I think they [ACORN and the CRA] were very major contributors to the current crisis. For 30 years they compelled banks to make loans to unqualified people.

“Groups like ACORN were getting money from the federal government for promoting these activities,” he continued, “They essentially engaged in legalized extortion of banks. Any bank that plans a merger or expansion can be challenged in court about their compliance with the CRA. It must first prove to regulators that it has made ‘enough’ loans to the government’s preferred borrowers. ACORN would threaten these plans by prolonging the process in the courts. The banks routinely buy off ACORN and other “community groups” by giving them millions of dollars as well as promising to make even more dubious loans.”

According to Mr. DiLorenzo, the federal government has been paying ACORN to enforce the CRA, which is “all about making loans to unqualified buyers.” Further, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, by a 1992 law, were devoted to subsidizing these loans by securitizing them. (Securitization means the mortgages purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were sold to private investors.)

Wade Rathke, the founder of ACORN and SEIU Local 100, AFL-CIO, started up a lobbying organization called ‘Citizens Consulting’.  Citizens Consulting received over $300,000 in contracts for providing ‘Administrative Services’ from ACORN’s Chicago-based ‘Housing Corporation’ in 2005 alone.  I haven’t looked into the rest of ACORN’s tax forms, but when I get more info, I’ll post it here.

Also of note are ACORN’s obvious ties to union bosses, who funnel union employees’ dues into the organization and Rathke’s consulting (lobbing) firm.

This summer, Rathke resigned as the head of ACORN (but still operates as the chief organizer for ACORN International and continues to meet with employees) after it came out that his brother had embezzled nearly $8 million of the organization’s money.  Keep in mind that ACORN receives a large sum of their income from government (and the Carnegie Foundation, which is another story that I won’t get into here).

So what, you say?  Rathke obviously isn’t running for President, even if he played a large part in our current economic crisis and is a dirty scoundrel who exploits people’s hopes and dreams to line his own pockets and facilitate his desire for power.  So what if his group has been involved in massive voter fraud and extorted banks into giving loans to unqualified borrowers?  He’s unimportant in the broad scheme of things, right?

But Barack Obama is running for President, and Barack Obama has deep ties with ACORN.

Indeed, Mr. Obama has extensive connections with the granddaddy of activist groups, Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which has gotten millions in government grants for its low-income housing programs. In 1992, Acorn hired Mr. Obama to run a voter registration effort. He later became a trainer for the group, as well as its lawyer in election law cases.

Acorn’s political arm has endorsed Mr. Obama while its “voter education” arm has pledged to spend $35 million to register people this fall — despite a history of vote fraud scandals that have led to guilty pleas by many Acorn employees.

The housing bill now before Congress would set up a slush fund for community organizations such as Acorn. But Acorn has gone quiet in its lobbying for the bill this week with the news that one of its employees — [Dale Rathke,] the brother of Acorn founder Wade Rathke — had stolen nearly $1 million from the group. Mr. Rathke decided not to alert law enforcement or the organization’s board, and kept his brother employed at Acorn until last month. “Is this the kind of group we want getting taxpayer money?” asks Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.)

–  John Fund, The Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2008

Not enough of a connection for you?

In the April 29, 2008, Wall Street Journal, Fund wrote that Barack Obama came to Chicago “as a community organizer in the 1980s and quickly developed a name for himself as a litigator in voting cases.”

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; […]

Acorn’s efforts to register voters have been scandal-prone. St. Louis, Mo., officials found that in 2006 over 1,000 addresses listed on its registrations didn’t exist. “We met twice with Acorn before their drive, but our requests completely fell by the wayside,” said Democrat Matt Potter, the city’s deputy elections director. Later, federal authorities indicted eight of the group’s local workers. One of the eight pleaded guilty last month.

In Seattle, local officials invalidated 1,762 Acorn registrations. Felony charges were filed against seven of its workers, some of whom have criminal records. Prosecutors say Acorn’s oversight of its workers was virtually nonexistent. To avoid prosecution, Acorn agreed to pay $25,000 in restitution.

Despite this record – and polls that show clear majorities of blacks and Hispanics back voter ID laws – Mr. Obama continues to back Acorn. They both joined briefs urging the Supreme Court to overturn Indiana’s law.

In his July 12, 2008, article Fund commented that, due to the “leading role” ACORN, and “other liberal groups”, may play in electing Obama, these groups “deserve a closer look now, before their influence and possibly their clout grow dramatically after the November election.”

–  The Real Barack Obama

So consider, if you will, the following:

1) ACORN’s role in our current financial crisis through lobbying efforts and lawsuits, their shady leaders, their voter fraud activities, and the fact that they are funded largely (now) by the taxpayers of this country.

2) Barack Obama’s intimate involvement with ACORN as a “Community Organizer” and hired counsel for the organization.

3) Democrat Senators Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank’s involvement in appropriating 20% of the last ‘Housing Bill’ to ACORN.

4) Democrat Christopher Dodd’s sweetheart deal with Countrywide.

5) Democrat President Bill Clinton’s expansion of the CRA (pushed by ACORN), which created a large portion of the current economic disaster.

6) Top Democrats (Dodd, Obama, and John Kerry) receiving the vast majority of lobbying funds from Freddie & Fannie employees.

And that’s not even all of it, folks.  A person could write a book about this fiasco, if they had time.

Yet the Democrats and Barack Obama would like you to believe that we’re in this mess because of greedy and power-hungry corporations.  They have the greed and power-hungry part right, they just need to insert “government” and “shady non-profits” in place of corporations.

Where, oh where is our media?!?!?!?!?!?  This has nothing to do with Democrats vs. Republicans, but rather evil, greedy, power-hungry government monsters (who happen to be mostly Democrats and evil taxpayer-funded non-profit scumbags) against the taxpayers of America.  So why are our main news sources neglecting to give us this information?

Folks, if you vote for Barack Obama and Democrats because you believe that they’re ‘for the little guy’, consider all of the information contained in this post, and tell me that these despicable human beings don’t make Enron look like a drop in the bucket.  Then consider how they created legislation that gives mortgages away to unqualified borrowers (the poor) of which they can’t possibly afford, only to have to watch their dream of home ownership be stripped away when they can’t make the payments.  (Duh?)   THEN, consider the fact that these creeps have the AUDACITY to lecture John McCain and House Republicans on what got us here in the first place?

If you’re angry about large corporations like WalMart or oil companies turning ridiculous profits, consider the fact that these companies make their money by CREATING and SELLING THINGS that PEOPLE WANT and NEED.  These jerks in Congress and ACORN are taking money from your pockets, creating legislation that puts the American taxpayer in a precarious economic situation through no fault of our own, and then ask us to BAIL THEM OUT.

What am I missing, here?  Why isn’t all of America up-in-arms over this?  And how can ANYONE justify voting for a Democrat right now, let alone Barack Obama?

*****UPDATE*****

Michelle Malkin has a great post on the $100 million in funds that has been promised to ACORN through the $700 billion bailout package.  Check it out.