Stanley Kurtz has written a very compelling article of how Acorn used it’s influence with congress to push the acceptability of risky subprime loans. Here are some exerpts from the must read article:
“SPREADING THE VIRUS
HOW ACORN & ITS DEM ALLIES BUILT THE MORTGAGE DISASTER”
“By STANLEY KURTZ”
“TO discover the roots of to day’s economic crisis, consider a tale from 1995.
That March, House Speaker Newt Gingrich was scheduled to address a meeting of county commissioners at the Washington Hilton. But, first, some 500 protesters from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) poured into the ballroom from both the kitchen and the main entrance.
Hotel staffers who tried to block them were quickly overwhelmed by demonstrators chanting, “Nuke Newt!” and “We want Newt!” Jamming the aisles, carrying bullhorns and taunting the assembled county commissioners, demonstrators swiftly took over the head table and commandeered the microphone, sending two members of Congress scurrying.”
“Yet ACORN had only just begun. Two days later, 50 to 100 of the same protesters hit their main target – a House Banking subcommittee considering changes to the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that allows groups like ACORN to force banks into making high-risk loans to low-credit customers.
The CRA’s ostensible purpose is to prevent banks from discriminating against minorities. But Rep. Marge Roukema (R-NJ), who chaired the subcommittee, was worried that charges of discrimination had become an excuse for lowering credit standards. She warned that new, Democrat-proposed CRA regulations could amount to an illegal quota system.
FOR years, ACORN had combined manipulation of the CRA with intimidation-protest tactics to force banks to lower credit standards. Its crusade, with help from Democrats in Congress, to push these high-risk “subprime” loans on banks is at the root of today’s economic meltdown.”
“So ACORN’s Democratic friends in Congress moved to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to dispense with normal credit standards. Throughout the early ’90s, they imposed ever-increasing subprime-lending quotas on Fannie and Freddie.”
“Requests to the Capital Police to release the activists from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass,) failed. Then Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) showed up at the jail and refused to leave until the protesters were released; the Capital Police relented.”
“Instead, Democrats like Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Reps. Kennedy and Waters allied with the Clinton administration to broaden the acceptability of risky subprime loans throughout the financial system, thus precipitating our current crisis.
ACORN had come to Congress not only to protect the CRA from GOP reforms but also to expand the reach of quota-based lending to Fannie, Freddie and beyond. By steamrolling the GOP that March, it had crushed the last potential barrier to “change.””
“HOW does Barack Obama fit into all of this? Obama has been a key ally of Chicago ACORN going back to his days as a community organizer.
Later, as a young lawyer, he offered leadership training to the activists who were forcing Chicago banks into high-risk subprime loans. And when he made it on to the boards of Chicago’s Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he channeled money ACORN’s way.
Obama was perfectly aware of ACORN’s intimidation tactics – indeed, he oversaw a Woods Fund report that boasted of managing to fund the radical group despite its shocking behavior.
And as a lawmaker, in Illinois and in Washington, he has continued to back ACORN’s leglislative agenda.”
“ACORN’s alliance with the Democratic Party is at the root of the current financial meltdown. And Barack Obama has stayed true to ACORN’s ways.”
Read the rest of this great article here and by all means tell everyone you know:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10132008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/spreading_the_virus_133375.htm
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