"Obama is headed to Massachusetts Sunday to campaign for Democrat Martha Coakley, whose race against Republican Scott Brown has narrowed to a toss-up as voters zero in on the cost of a massive health insurance bill in Congress."
“Categorized by issue area, these totals encompass the estimated monetary benefits of some of ACORN’s major campaigns between 1995 and 2004, including:
- Passage of 11 living wage ordinances, and minimum wage increases in Illinois, Massachusetts, Florida, New York, and the City of San Francisco.
- Legislation limiting predatory lending in Massachusetts, New Mexico, California, New York and New Jersey, and improvements in federal regulations.
…STATE EITC INCREASES
Finally, ACORN has successfully increased the earnings of low-wage workers by allowing them to keep more of what they make. In Massachusetts, ACORN led a coalition that won an increase in the state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in 1999, from 10 percent of the federal credit to 15 percent, or a 50 percent increase. According to the State Department of Revenue, close to $21 million additional dollars went into the pockets of low-income taxpayers annually after the increase was implemented.”
ACORN Legislative Agenda for 2007
Working Families Agenda
Minimum Wage – Soon after the new Congress gets to work in January, both the House and the Senate are expected to move bills to increase the minimum wage to $7.25 an hours in three steps by 2009. While almost everyone believes this will pass (and Bush has indicated he will sign an increase), the fight will be over getting a clean bill – without poison pill amendments such as small business tax breaks or “protection” of small business from health insurance costs (read: higher premiums and insurance cut offs for our members). ACORN will take a leadership role in both raising the profile of the issue with our friends in Congress in select Congressional Districts in Dec and Jan – AND targeting some moderate Republicans and weak Dems who are more likely to go along with the poison pills.
Soon after we get the $7.25, Sen. Kennedy will introduce a more ambitious bill to restore the value of the minimum wage to its historic levels (more like $9.00/hr.) AND index it to inflation. We’ll likely have to fight for this bill for many years, and it is not likely to be a very big priority in year one, 2007.
Paid Sick Days – ACORN intends to make the fight for paid sick day a big one in 2007. To supplement our city and state campaigns on this issue, we will push for the Healthy Families Act (introduced by Sen. Kennedy and Rep. DeLauro), which would require employers to provide 7 paid sick days a year.
“The Working Families Party in New York and Connecticut continued to establish themselves shrewdly as political forces. The ballot project in Massachusetts to advance election opportunities (read fusion) made it to the ballot, which was never easy, but unfortunately could not overcome some of its negatives, so lost decidedly by a woeful margin, even in the trenches of liberalism. This will be something that we will have to answer in the future.”
“In 2007, for the first time in 12 years, we will be working with a Democratic controlled Congress. Without being overly optimistic (after all, it takes 60 votes to pass anything controversial in the Senate, and Bush is still President), we are developing an ambitious agenda of programs and priorities that we will be pushing for. In particular, we will be paying attention to how our allies in Congress can assist us in our campaign work by holding hearings and otherwise shining a spotlight on our issues and targets – something that only the majority party can do.
Furthermore, we are working to make sure that key leaders in Congress fully understand the role that ACORN played in the 2006 elections: we are working collaboratively with the political department to ensure that the impact of our political work is widely known and appreciated.
Legislative priorities will include:
ACORN Working Families Agenda, including an increase in the minimum wage, paid sick days, expanded EITC, and Childcare assistance.
Immigration reform, which may actually move early next year.
Legislation outlawing predatory lending practices (as opposed to just stopping bad pre-emptive legislation).
Additional funding for housing counseling, and a separate pool of funding for delinquency/foreclosure counseling and outreach.
A housing trust fund – which will make funding available for our development program.
Possible legislation on RALs, payday lending, and other predatory financial practices, as well as support for our VITA and benefit access centers.
Election reform, on voting machines, voter registration issues, etc...
“Rathke stepped down from ACORN in 2008. Since his departure, ACORN's been accused of voter registration fraud, embezzlement and worker misconduct. Hidden camera video made public earlier this year shows ACORN employees telling a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute how to get around tax laws to make money.
'It's very worrisome to me,' says Rathke, 'having spent 38 years there. The notion that within one and a half years since I left, the organization could almost evaporate is just stunning and startling to me."According to reports, Rathke is pessimistic about the future of ACORN:
"The organization has become the focal point of the Right," Rathke said during an interview before his speech.
"I don't know if it can survive another year," he said....
'ACORN, Rathke said, serves an important function in a democratic society, in that it 'provides a vehicle for community residents, particularly lower and middle income, to have a voice in affairs.'
'You are going to have some people who cut corners, and do things that are irregular. ACORN made mistakes,' he said.
Rathke said he was glad to be in Canada when the Baltimore video surfaced. “Unfortunately, Wade Rathke is still peddling the myth that ACORN actually works to help the poor. Grant applications to various foundations describe ACORN as:
“ACORN is one of the nation’s largest and most successful networks of community organizations, with over 230,000 low and moderate-income members organized into 1200+ neighborhood chapters in 104 cities across the country. Since 1970 ACORN has been building solidly rooted and powerful community organizations that are committed to social and economic justice, and have taken action and won victories on thousands of issues of concern to our members, through direct action, negotiation, legislative advocacy, and voter participation. Fundamentally, ACORN’s goal is to ensure that low and moderate income families have the power to act effectively on their own behalf in the struggle to build a more progressive America. ACORN helps those who have historically been locked out become powerful actors in our democratic system.”Liberals cling to the myth of ACORN so they can claim that the “right” is trying to stop persons of color from getting ahead, or as it in known in an ACORN “rap,” “the man keeping a brotha down.”
“U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan has formally asked Ohio's secretary of state to look into allegations that ACORN had at least a preliminary plan to back Democrat candidates in key Ohio congressional races in 2008.”The political plan was described in an October article as “having been scaled back,” and of course, ACORN denied any partisan activity.
“But to some, ACORN's early 13-page plan for the 2008 election reinforces what critics always assumed: The group's goal was never nonpartisan. The political plan and other ACORN documents show that the group was interested not just in helping presidential candidate Barack Obama, whom it urged its members to support, according to post-election Federal Election Commission reports. ACORN also was interested in Congress and the Ohio Statehouse.An illuminating fact not mentioned in either article is that ACORN prepared political plans for several key battleground states in 2006 and again during the 2007-08 election cycle. As evidenced by the draft plans developed in the Spring of 2006 by the Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD) of ACORN Political Operations, these plans were aimed at electing “progressives” and in some cases broke down the Congressional districts by race for maximum targeting. SWORD, which was staffed by Project Vote staff, including myself, worked with ACORN head organizers in FL, MD, MI, MN, OH, PA, and RI to create local documents for the ACORN field staff to implement and present to funders and/or various partner organizations.
"There's no question that ACORN strategized to figure out how its election efforts could maximize the benefit for selected Democratic candidates in the most competitive races," U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa of California told The Plain Dealer. “
"In fact, the Obama campaign paid an ACORN-run organization more than $800,000. In Federal Election Commission required filings, the Obama campaign reported that this money was paid for polling, advance work and event staging. After watchdog scrutiny called this claim into question, the Obama campaign revised its filing and acknowledged that CSI was paid for “get-out-the-vote” projects.
CSI Executive Vice President Jeff Robinson last August told Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter David M. Brown that CSI is a 'separate organization entirely' from ACORN. But as Brown reported, CSI has the same office address as ACORN’s national headquarters, ACORN itself described CSI in 2006 as its 'campaign services entity.' Coincidentally, the widely identified “national deputy political director for campaigns and elections” for ACORN is...Jeff Robinson."ACORN's shell corporations make it easy for a political plan to become a partisan voter registration drive facilitated by thin veiled “partnerships.” The filing reports of Communities Voting Together raise a number of questions, including whether the misspelling of the name on the filing was intentional. The payments to various ACORN entities should give any astute lawmaker pause.
“A former staffer for Project Vote, a sister organization of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, testified at a hearing in Pennsylvania on Wednesday that the Obama campaign provided the group with a campaign donor list in late 2007 for their fundraising efforts. The former D.C. staffer, Anita Moncrief, said she still has a copy of what she called the 'development plan' she used to help her identify the maxed-out Obama donors for solicitation. The hearing was part of a lawsuit brought by the GOP seeking information and an injunction against certain ACORN activities in Pennsylvania.
“McCain-Palin campaign manager Rick Davis said in a statement, 'We now know that Barack Obama's campaign was working hand-in-glove with an organization reportedly under investigation by the F.B.I. and in more than a dozen states. In addition to funneling $832,000 to ACORN for get-out-the-vote efforts, the Obama campaign and ACORN have been sharing donor lists, encouraging maxed-out Obama donors to contribute to this unethical organization.'" (emphasis mine).”
“Bob Bauer has a public record of defending Barack Obama’s relationship with ACORN. Bauer has acted as the agent between Obama and ACORN, and now he will be perfectly positioned to be tasked with erasing the tracks between Obama and ACORN. Bauer’s hiring appears to be a tactical maneuver to strategically defend the White House exactly one week after Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell raided ACORN's national headquarters in New Orleans and seized paper records and computer hard drives that may lead to the White House.”
“First, the GOP now must recognize it will either lose without conservatives or will win with conservatives. In 2008, many conservatives sat home instead of voting for John McCain. Now, in NY-23, conservatives rallied and destroyed the Republican candidate the establishment chose.“
“Meanwhile, the Republicans keep running 'moderates' who prove to be very useful to the Democrats… which keeps the growth of the State bubbling along at Bush levels. The radical nature of the current Administration makes the idea of 'moderate' compromise laughable. What’s the moderate position on freedom-crushing trillion-dollar health care and environmentalist legislation? They’re okay, as long as the Democrats pinky-swear to keep the cost under $800 billion? That’s the kind of promise no politician could keep, even if it was made in earnest. A moderate Republican is someone who lives in a state of perpetual surprise as he ponders the monthly bills for nanny-state government. What’s the point of electing people who are guaranteed to spend the rest of their political careers complaining about how they’ve been played for fools?”
“Change is not an open ended mandate or a blank check. Change is a warning to either perform or meet the same fate as the last incumbent. And while Obama was clutching the keys to the kingdom in his dirty little hands, flying endlessly around the world, taking Air Force One on dates and primping and posing for magazine covers; ordinary Americans were losing jobs, families were cutting back, credit card bills piled up, vacations vanished and people came to work every day not knowing if it would be their last. Tonight was a major warning sign to Obama that these Two Americas cannot co-exist forever. And sooner or later Americans will want their White House back from its current lazy and debauched tenants.”
“The Working Family Party is desperate, Today's poll show that Doug Hoffman is drawing votes from all Demographics".
"voter intimidation, absentee ballot fraud and groups like ACORN/Working Families Party and big labor stealing the election from the people of the 23rd district."
A First Read analysis of the data shows that almost $1 billion was allocated to counties in -- either wholly or partially -- New York’s 23rd congressional district."
