Acorn or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is still with us and planning for the future destruction of the United States as we know it. On August 30, I received an Email notice from Newsmax that Matthew Vadum had written a new book titled Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers. What the Newsmax Email said about the book intrigued me, so I bought it and read it. I decided that some more people needed to know what is in this book, so you might read it and take action to monitor what ACORN is doing today. I hope after reading these few comments you will also read the entire book and start keeping track of where ACORN is today.
Because of ACORN’s past history of voter registration fraud and other criminal activities, and my work exposing double voters in Palm Beach County, I have become more vigilant than some in monitoring the signals of voting problems. As I read the book, I decided that Floridians, especially the Republicans, need to know what the book says about ACORN activities in Florida. So this is what this essay is all about. I want to share some facts and factors that the book brings to our attention.
Ronald Reagan called ACORN “dangerous” on a radio talk show in 1970. It was after that that ACORN declared war on the Republican Party and began to work with Democrats. Vadum relates that it was Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, a Republican, who in 1970 got ACORN into the voter registration business and gave ACORN $100,000 cash to get out the vote in Arkansas. (40) HUD Secretaries Alphonso Jackson, Jack Kemp, and Mel Martinez all worked with ACORN. Even John McCain’s support of ACORN got him into trouble in the third presidential debate in 2008. (49)
Not surprisingly, Vadum writes that “When he was still a Republican in 2008, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and his chief elections officer, Secretary of State Kurt S. Browning, both rejected McCain’s condemnation of ACORN. When reporters asked the governor if he objected to ACORN being active in Florida elections, he replied, ‘no.’ Browning concurred. Crist also signed into law an ACORN-backed bill that restored the voting rights of more than 100,000 ex-convicts.” (50)
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was for ACORN and signed a bill funding the organization before calling for the funding to be cut in 2009. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney signed an ACORN-backed bill that cracked down on the subprime lending industry. (50)
Cloward and Piven came up with the idea to register massive numbers of new voters as part of their strategy to push the Democratic Party to power. They wrote about this in ACORN’s magazine, Social Policy in 1983. (100)
The Congressional Black Caucus was formed in 1971, a year after ACORN, “as a vehicle in Congress for radical left-wing black politicians.” (127) Take note Allen West.
Saul Alinsky liked to taunt liberals. “A liberal is the kind of guy who walks out of a room when the argument turns into a fight,” Alinsky said. To Alinsky, liberals were saps to be manipulated. Alinsky was always able to find guilt ridden capitalists to fund the downfall of capitalism and Vadum names Marshall Field III and Midas Muffler founder Gordon B. Sherman. (132) Vadum says the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) gave money to Alinsky and continues to do so today. (133)
Although Alinsky has rules, these were written later in life. Alinsky’s most fundamental teaching is explained by David Horowitz, according to Vadum, that “radicals have to lie to their opponents and disarm them by pretending to be moderates and liberals.” Deception is the most important arrow in the radical’s quiver. “Radical arsonists such as Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright pose as civil rights activists; anti-American radicals such as Bill Ayers pose as patriotic progressives; socialists pose as liberals,” Horowitz writes. “The mark of their success is reflected in the fact that conservatives collude in the deception and call them liberals as well.” (138) Notice that lies are a main function of Taliban and Islamofacists, too.
After funding problems in 2009 and 2010 brought about by investigative journalists, ACORN Housing changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America. (141)
Vadum says, “Alinsky taught the community organizer’s first job is ‘community disorganization’ by manufacturing crises in order to inflame the community. The organizer must “create the issues or problems.” He must “rub raw the resentments of the people of the community” and “fan then latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression.” The organizer must “agitate to the point of conflict” because without friction and controversy “people are not concerned enough to act.” (142)
In Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis at Wellesley College, Alinsky is reported to “have told her that he was the second most important Jew in the history of Christianity.” (147)
Florida ACORN gathered almost a million signatures to get wage increase measures on the state’s ballot in 2004, partly as a strategy to increase low-income turnout for the presidential vote. (254) Miami ACORN got a taste of its own medicine when it stiffed dozens of its 2004 election workers. The canvassers had helped get signatures to get Amendment 5 on the ballot to raise the state minimum wage. During a sit-in in the Miami ACORN office unpaid employees set fire to the office kitchenette and stole computers. (262)
The whole of chapter 13 is about Voter Fraud. In Florida, seven ACORN employees were convicted of voter registration fraud in 2010. Their names are Maurice Childress, Kashawn John, Littovia Rhodes, Carlos Torres, Evangeline Williams, Likevia Williams and Richard Williams. Vadum lists two pages of names of persons convicted of voter fraud from 1998 to 2010. (287)
“In Florida, consultant Joe Johnson stopped working with ACORN because he was concerned the group was not submitting complete registration cards to election officials, In that state, ACORN hired convicted armed robber Mac Stuart in 2003 as a petition signature gatherer, apparently without checking his background. Stuart rose of the ranks quickly and was put in charge of the Miami voter registration drive.” (292)
Matt Stoller, a senior policy advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) ran an online discussion forum, named Townhouse, for Nathan Hendrson-James, director of ACORN’s online campaigns. Henderson-James sent a message to members of Townhouse in February 2010 saying “Last one out turn out the lights and wipe the server.” This was part of an ACORN strategy to dupe Americans into thinking ACORN was shutting down. (330)
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) were demanding a probe of ACORN’s ties to President Obama, but a federal racketeering probe has not started yet in 2011. The Community Action Support Center (CASC) may be a main vehicle being developed by formerly named ACORN organizations. Watch for variations of this name to pop up is the way I read Vadum’s suggestion relative to this new group. (332)
The Vadum book goes on for 350 pages plus useful appendices. If what I have provided here does not excite you to read the book, then think about this information from Matthew Vadum: The Obama Administration is calling for $10.3 Trillion expansion in welfare in 10 years according to the Heritage Foundation. Only $6.4 Trillion has been spent on the wars in the Middle East, but $16 Trillion has been spent on the War on Poverty. By 2015 welfare will reach $1 Trillion a year.
Subversion Inc. is published by WND Books, and can be purchased on Amazon.com for less than $20. ISBN: 978-1-935071-14-3 (2011)
