Quotes of the day

Is Acorn Intentionally Structured as a Criminal Enterprise? (links to 88-page PDF report)
July 23, 2009

Source of report – Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (landing page)
Ranking Member Darrell Issa (republicans.oversight.house.gov)

Documents contained in this report reveal ACORN’s political agenda. ACORN’s 2005-2007 Strategic Plan states that “just as important as … mobilizing existing progressive voters, ACORN and similar groups actually create new progressive voters.” In the same document, ACORN acknowledges that its “issue campaigns play the dual role … of attracting new members, and educating or politicizing existing members.” One particular issue where ACORN claims success is “fighting key elements of the national Republican program.”

In other documents, ACORN affiliates take credit for the election of former-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. In the 2006 year-end report of ACORN affiliate Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 880, efforts to elect Blagojevich and advance partisan political agendas are called “flawless.”

Labor organizations, unions, and other tax-exempt entities stretched Chicago-style political manipulation and back room schemes beyond Illinois to other state-wide and national campaign efforts. In the State of Ohio, where ACORN directors drafted a political plan contained in this report, overt partisan goals are enumerated. The ACORN Ohio Political Plan states:

ACORN will target three competitive Ohio congressional districts as well as a half dozen state rep seats nested within the districts. Our electoral work will mobilize and educate voters [and] our paid professional canvass will execute tightly managed Voter ID and GOTV canvasses moving our core constituency of base and swing voters to the polls to vote for the candidates who most closely align with a progressive Working Families Agenda.

Moreover, documents provided by former ACORN employees and contained in this report demonstrate the degree to which ACORN and ACORN affiliates organized to elect President Barack Obama in 2008.

This somewhat comprehensive report has been out since late July, as noted. It has footnotes, names, analysis, and legal excerpts as source material, much of it damning, and should have raised more than just collective silence from the Tributary Media™.

Understanding that Breitbart is focusing more on the media component than the ACORN establishment itself (since exposing ACORN and its tentacles are the vehicle to drive home an existential threat and grandest failure rampant now in our a democracy), I’m hedging my “left field” bets on an ACORN/SEIU/Blagojevich angle and the subsequent failure of Tributary Media™ to dig into the endemic corruption of Chicago politics – the city that birthed Obama the community activist-politician. ACORN ascendancy really accelerated with Blagojevich’s election and led right into another local, Obama, gaining power. State-level success beget Federal level success. Add in labor unions (SEIU), classical-Chicago thuggery and manipulation, questionable voter registration, and a disinterested if not actually protectionist press and you have the makings of a “blockbuster” story.