According to a WorldNetDaily report:
"A senior FBI official has admitted the United States is
finding it virtually impossible to screen out terrorists that could be hiding
among the thousands of Syrian 'refugees' heading soon to American cities. The
U.S. simply does not have the resources to stop Islamic radicals in Syria from
slipping into the country through the State Department’s refugee-resettlement
program, said Michael Steinbach, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter
terrorism unit. Separating legitimate refugees from terrorists was difficult
enough in Iraq, where the U.S. had a large occupation force. Even then, the
U.S. government’s vetting process missed “dozens” of Iraqi jihadists who
slipped into the country posing as refugees and took up residence in Kentucky,
according to a November 2013 ABC News report."
Obama Administration Unilaterally Announces That Spouses of
Certain Visa Holders Could Now Get Work Permits
On March 24, 2015, the Obama administration announced that the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would begin granting work permits to the
spouses of H-1B visa holders -- skilled foreign workers seeking permanent
resident status in the United States -- on May 26th. According to U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIC), a division of DHS, as many as
179,000 foreigners would be eligible to apply for work permits under the new
rule in the first year -- and 55,000 annually thereafter. DHS said the move "should
also support the U.S. economy" and would "bring U.S. immigration
policies more in line with those laws of other countries that compete to
attract similar highly skilled workers."
OBAMA AND WELFARE POLICY
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Obama's Mushrooming Welfare State
From 2008 to 2011, federal welfare assistance (in America's 79
means-tested federal welfare programs) grew by 32%, from $563.413 billion to
$745.84 billion annually. According to Heritage Foundation Senior Research
Fellow Robert Rector, the spike in federal welfare spending during Obama’s
first two years in office was two-and-a-half times greater than any previous
increase in American history, after adjusting for inflation.
According to a CNS News report, “Obama’s spending proposals call
for the largest increases in welfare benefits in U.S. history ... a spending
total of $10.3 trillion over the next decade on various welfare programs. These
include cash payments, food, housing, Medicaid and various social services for
low-income Americans ...”
Obama Has Long Opposed Welfare Reform
When he was an Illinois state senator in 1996, Obama spoke from
the floor against implementing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which was ultimately passed by Congress and signed
into law by President Bill Clinton. That welfare-reform bill placed certain
limitations on how long a household could continue to receive benefits, and
instituted a work requirement designed to move people off the welfare rolls and
into paying jobs. Ultimately, PRWORS reduced the number of households
participating in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFCDC) program by
60%, from 5.1 million to 2 million.
Upon joining the U.S. Senate in January 2005, Obama quickly set
out to undermine the welfare-reform law. Consider that in 2005, Congress closed
a loophole that had permitted some states to circumvent the legislation by
defining as “work” such activities as bed rest, personal care activities,
massage, exercise, journaling, motivational reading, smoking cessation, weight
loss promotion, participation in parent-teacher meetings, or helping friends or
family with household tasks and errands. Obama strongly objected to the closure
of that loophole.
Ending the Work Requirements for Welfare
On July 12, 2012, President Obama's Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS) issued a policy directive eliminating the federal work
requirements that were the essential ingredient of the 1996 welfare-reform bill
(PRWORA). Thus did Obama promote the further expansion of the American welfare
state.
Illegal Aliens Who Have Never Paid Taxes Are Now Eligible for
Federal Tax "Refunds"
On February 11, 2015, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told
Congress that even illegal immigrants who had never previously paid taxes would
be able to claim back-refunds of the Earned Income Tax Credit – which allows
even people with no tax liability to get money from the government – once they
received Social Security numbers under President Obama's executive action on
deportation. "Under the new program, if you get a Social Security number
and you work, you'll be eligible to apply for the Earned Income Tax
Credit," said Koskinen. This would be the case even "if you did not
file" taxes, he elaborated, as long as the illegal immigrant could
demonstrate that he or she had worked off-the-books during those years.
According to a Washington Times report: “That expands the
universe of people eligible for the tax credit by millions. [Koskinen] said
only about 700,000 illegal immigrants currently work and pay taxes using an
Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, but as many as 4 million illegal
immigrants could get a stay of deportation and work permits under the temporary
amnesty, which would mean they would be eligible to claim back-refunds if they
worked those years.”
OBAMA AND THE CONSTITUTION / SUPREME COURT
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The Constitution As a “Living Document”
In his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope, Obama expresses his
belief that the U.S. Constitution is a living document (subject to constant
reinterpretation and change), and states that, as President, he would not
appoint a strict constructionist (a Justice who seeks to apply the text as it
is written and without further inference) to the Supreme Court: “When we get in
a tussle, we appeal to the Founding Fathers and the Constitution’s ratifiers to
give direction. Some, like Justice Scalia, conclude that the original
understanding must be followed and if we obey this rule, democracy is
respected. Others, like Justice Breyer, insist that sometimes the original
understanding can take you only so far—that on the truly big arguments, we have
to take context, history, and the practical outcomes of a decision into
account. I have to side with Justice Breyer’s view of the Constitution—that it
is not a static but rather a living document and must be read in the context of
an ever-changing world.”
Emphasis on a Justice's “Heart” and on Helping “the Weak,”
Rather Than on Abiding by the Law
When President Bush in 2005 nominated John Roberts to be Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, then-Senator Obama stated that few Supreme Court
cases involve any controversy at all, “so that both a [conservative like]
Scalia and a [leftist like] Ginsburg will arrive at the same place most of the
time on those 95 percent of cases.” In the other 5 percent, he said, “the
critical ingredient” was neither the law nor the Constitution says, but rather
“what is in the judge’s heart.” Obama said in a floor speech on September 22,
2005: “[W]hen I examined Judge Roberts’ record and history of public service,
it is my personal estimation that he has far more often used his formidable
skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak ... he seemed to have
consistently sided with those who were dismissive of efforts to eradicate the
remnants of racial discrimination in our political process … he seemed
dismissive of concerns that it is harder to make it in this world and in this
economy when you are a woman rather than a man.”
Obama was also “deeply troubled” by “the philosophy, ideology
and record” of yet another Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito.
“[W]hen you look at his record,” Obama said in a floor speech on January 26,
2006, “when it comes to his understanding of the Constitution, I found that in
almost every case he consistently sides on behalf of the powerful against the
powerless.”
Explaining the criteria by which he would appoint judges to the
federal bench, presidential candidate Obama declared: “We need somebody who's
got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage
mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or
gay or disabled or old—and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my
judges.”
Obama Appoints Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court (May 2009)
In her college yearbook, Sotomayor selected, as her special
quotation, the following statement of Norman Thomas, who ran for U.S. president
six times on the Socialist Party ticket: “I am not a champion of lost causes,
but of causes not yet won.”
In the early 1990s, Sotomayor spoke publicly and proudly about
the role that affirmative action (racial and ethnic preferences) had played in
her educational background: “I am a product of affirmative action. I am the
perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican ... I was accepted rather
readily at Princeton, and equally as fast at Yale. But my test scores were not
comparable to that of my classmates, and that's been shown by statistics, there
are reasons for that. There are cultural biases built into testing, and that
was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action, to try to
balance out those effects.”
In 1998 the Family Research Council named Sotomayor as the
recipient of its Court Jester Award, mocking her decision to extend the application
of the Americans With Disabilities Act to a woman who had cited her own
inability to read as the “handicap” that caused her to fail the New York State
bar exam several times.
In 2001 Sotomayor gave a speech at UC Berkeley, during which she
suggested, approvingly, that making the federal bench more “diverse”—in terms
of ethnicity, race, gender, or sexual orientation—“will have an effect on the
development of the law and on judging.”
Refuting the notion that judges should not permit personal
traits (race, gender, ethnicity) to influence their legal decisions, Sotomayor
said: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her
experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white
male who hasn’t lived that life.” This assertion by Sotomayor was not an
isolated incident. Indeed, she delivered multiple speeches between 1994 and
2003 in which she suggested “a wise Latina woman” or “wise woman” judge might
“reach a better conclusion” than a male judge.
Sotomayor is a member of the National Council of La Raza, which
favors mass immigration and ever-increasing rights for illegal immigrants.
Awash in a victim mentality, she describes Latinos as one of America’s
“economically deprived populations” which, like “all minority and women’s
groups,” are filled with people “who don’t make it in our society at all.”
Attributing those failures to inequities inherent in American life, Sotomayor
affirms her commitment to “serving the underprivileged of our society” by
promoting affirmative action and other policies designed to help those who
“face enormous challenges.”
In a 2005 panel discussion for law students, Sotomayor said that
a “court of appeals is where policy is made”—a candid rejection of the
long-accepted principle that a judge's proper role is to interpret the law
rather than to create it. Then, remembering that the event was being recorded,
Sotomayor added immediately: “And I know—I know this is on tape, and I should
never say that because we don’t make law. I know. O.K. I know. I’m not
promoting it. I’m not advocating it. I’m—you know.”
Sotomayor is an advocate of legal realism, which the Traditional
Values Coalition (TVC) describes as a judicial philosophy that is
“diametrically opposed to the concept of strict construction/originalism as
advocated by conservative legal thinkers and judges.” TVC adds that according
to legal realism: “[J]udges should do more than interpret the law or look to
the original intent of the writers of the law or the Constitution. Judges
should bring in outside influences from social sciences, psychology and
politics, plus their own views, to craft the law….” Suggesting that the public
wrongly expects “the law to be static and predictable,” Sotomayor contends that
courts and lawyers are “constantly overhauling the laws and adapting it [sic]
to the realities of ever-changing social, industrial and political conditions.”
Obama Appoints Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court (May 2010)
A week after Ronald Reagan’s presidential victory in November
1980, Kagan, who was then a student at Princeton University, wrote in the
campus newspaper that her immediate “gut response” to Reagan's election had
been to conclude “that the world had gone mad, that liberalism was dead, and
that there was no longer any place for the ideals we held or the beliefs we
espoused.” Soon thereafter Kagan predicted, with a hopeful spirit, that “the
next few years will be marked by American disillusionment with conservative
programs and solutions, and that a new, revitalized, perhaps more leftist left
will once again come to the fore.”
The following year, Kagan penned her senior thesis—titled “To
the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933”—wherein she lamented
that “a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United
States”; that “Americans are more likely to speak of … capitalism’s glories
than of socialism’s greatness”; and that “the desire to conserve has
overwhelmed the urge to alter.” Kagan called these developments “sad” and
“chastening” for “those who, more than half a century after socialism’s
decline, still wish to change America.”
As a young lawyer, Kagan clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Thurgood Marshall, whom she now identifies as her hero. Regarding affirmative
action, Marshall infamously told fellow Supreme Court Justice William O.
Douglas, “You [white] guys have been practicing discrimination for years. Now
it's our [blacks'] turn.”
In one of her legal writings, Kagan cited Thurgood Marshall's
assertion that the Constitution, “as originally drafted and conceived,” was
“defective.” This view is consistent with President Obama's contention that the
Constitution “is not a static but rather a living document and must be read in
the context of an ever-changing world.” Kagan has also quoted Justice Marshall
saying that the Supreme Court's mission is to “show a special solicitude for
the despised and the disadvantaged,” rather than simply to interpret the law.
In an article she wrote for the University of Chicago Law
Review, Kagan indicated that there could be instances where the government
might justifiably interfere with the right to free speech: “If there is an
‘overabundance’ of an idea in the absence of direct governmental action—which
there well might be when compared with some ideal state of public debate—then
action disfavoring that idea might ‘un-skew,’ rather than skew, public
discourse.” This position has profound implications as regards the future of
conservative talk radio.
Kagan served under President Clinton in various capacities.
During her years in the Clinton White House, she supported race preferences in
the form of affirmative action.
During her tenure as dean at Harvard Law School, Kagan co-signed
a letter urging the Senate not to adopt an amendment that would have protected
the White House from lawsuits filed by foreign terrorists charging that their
“constitutional rights” had been violated by American law-enforcement and
intelligence authorities.
In 2006, Kagan instituted three new courses to the required
curriculum at Harvard Law. One of these courses focuses on public international
law; another deals with international economic law and multinational financial
transactions; the third is a comparative law class whose purpose is to
“introduce students to one or more legal systems outside our own, to the
borrowing and transmission of legal ideas across borders, and to a variety of
approaches to substantive and procedural law that are rooted in distinct
cultures and traditions.” While adding these three required courses, Kagan
eliminated a requirement for students to take at least one constitutional law
class at any time during their legal education.
OBAMA AND ABORTION
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Obama's Stance on Abortion
During his years as a state and federal legislator, Obama consistently
voted in favor of expanding abortion rights and the funding of abortion
services with taxpayer dollars. Says author David Freddoso, “I could find no
instance in his entire career in which he voted for any regulation or
restriction on the practice of abortion.”
In July 2006 Obama voted against a bill stipulating that the
parents of minor girls who get out-of-state abortions must be notified of their
daughters' actions. In March 2008 he voted against a bill prohibiting minors
from crossing state lines to gain access to abortion services. That same month,
he voted “No” on defining an unborn child as a human being eligible for the
State Children's Health Insurance Program.
On July 17, 2007, Obama declared: “The first thing I'd do as
President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.” This bill would have effectively
terminated all state restrictions on government funding for abortions. It would
also have invalidated state laws that protected medical personnel from losing
their jobs if they refused to participate in abortion procedures.
Obama's Support for Planned Parenthood
The largest abortion provider in the United States, Planned
Parenthood in 2008 alone was responsible for 324,008 abortions, as compared to
just 2,405 adoption referrals. This ratio was representative of the
organization's activities in most years.
On July 17, 2007, Obama thanked Planned Parenthood for “the
outstanding work” it was doing “for women all across the country and for
families all across the country.... I put Roe at the center of my lesson plan
on reproductive freedom when I taught Constitutional Law. Not simply as a case
about privacy but as part of the broader struggle for women’s equality.”
During an April 26, 2013 speech to Planned Parenthood, Obama
said: “As long as we’ve got to fight to make sure women have access to quality,
affordable health care, and as long as we’ve got to fight to protect a woman’s
right to make her own choices about her own health, I want you to know that
you’ve also got a president who’s going to be right there with you, fighting
every step of the way. Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you.”
Obama and Partial-Birth Abortion
When Obama was a state senator in 1997, two separate
“partial-birth abortion” bans came up for consideration. On both occasions
Obama voted “present,” the functional equivalent of a vote against the ban. The
term “partial-birth abortion” refers to a procedure where the abortionist
maneuvers the baby into a breech (feet-first) delivery position, permits the
baby's entire body to exit the birth canal except for its head, and then uses
scissors to puncture the baby's brain and kill it (while the head is still
inside the mother).
In 2000, Obama voted against a bill that would have ended state
funding for partial-birth abortions.
A Legalized Form of Infanticide
In 2002 Obama voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act,
which would have protected babies that somehow survived late-term abortion
procedures. The Act twice came up in the Judiciary Committee on which Obama
served. At its first reading he voted “present,” the functional equivalent of voting
against it. At the second reading, he voted “No.” The bill was then referred to
the senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, which Obama chaired after
2003. As chairman, he chose never to call the bill up for a vote.
Obama Strikes Down Rule that Prohibited U.S. Funding of Abortion
Clinics Overseas
On January 23, 2009—the day after the 36th anniversary of the
famous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision—President Obama struck down a rule
that had prohibited U.S. money from being used to fund international
family-planning clinics that either promote abortion or provide referrals to
abortion services. Stating that such restrictions on funding had been used as a
“political wedge issue,” the President said that he had “no desire to continue
this stale and fruitless debate.”
Obama Issues Edict Forcing Religious Healthcare Providers to
Violate Their Own Views on Abortion and Contraception
In January 2012 the Obama administration issued an edict
mandating that religious hospitals, schools, charities, and other health and
social service providers give their employees health-insurance plans covering
contraception, abortifacient pills, and sterilizations—even if those things
were in violation of the employers' moral or religious codes. Critics pointed
out that Obama's edict violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First
Amendment.
On February 10, 2012, the Obama administration, reacting to
harsh public criticism, announced that: “If a woman works for religious
employers with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its
health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide
contraception coverage but her insurance company will be required to offer
contraceptive care free of charge.”
According to pro-life Rep. Chris Smith: “The so-called new
policy is the discredited old policy, dressed up to look like something else It
remains a serious violation of religious freedom. Only the most naive or
gullible would accept this as a change in policy.... The White House Fact Sheet
is riddled with doublespeak and contradiction. It states, for example, that
religious employers ‘will not’ have to pay for abortion pills, sterilization
and contraception, but their ‘insurance companies’ will. Who pays for the
insurance policy? The religious employer.”
Eric Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League stated that the new
rule amounted to a “shell game.” “At the end of the day, religious employers
are still required to provide insurance plans that offer free contraceptives,
sterilizations and abortifacients in violation of their moral tenets,” he said.
43 Catholic Organizations Sue the Obama Administration
In May 2012, a total of 43 plaintiffs filed 12 separate federal
lawsuits against the Obama administration, challenging the constitutionality of
its mandate that religious entities must purchase insurance policies covering
contraception and abortion-related procedures.
OBAMA AND EDUCATION
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More Taxpayer Expenditures As the “Solution” to All
Schooling-Related Problems
In his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama stressed the importance
of increasing government expenditures on public education. “We're going to put
more money into education than we have,” he said. “We have to invest in human
capital.”
Obama’s education plan called for “investing” $10 billion
annually in a comprehensive “Zero to Five” plan that would “provide critical
supports to young children and their parents.” These funds would be used to
“create or expand high-quality early care and education programs for pregnant
women and children from birth to age five”; to “quadruple the number of
eligible children for Early Head Start”; to “ensure [that] all children have
access to pre-school”; to “provide affordable and high-quality child care that
will … ease the burden on working families”; to allow “more money” to be
funneled “into after-school programs”; and to fund “home visiting programs [by
health-care personnel] to all low-income, first-time mothers.”
Consider Obama's perspective on the low graduation rates of nonwhite
minorities: “Latinos have such a high dropout rate. What you see consistently
are children at a very early age are starting school already behind. That’s why
I’ve said that I’m going to put billions of dollars into early childhood
education that makes sure that our African-American youth, Latino youth, poor
youth of every race, are getting the kind of help that they need so that they
know their numbers, their colors, their letters.”
Obama's stimulus package included approximately $100 billion for
education.
In Reality, More Money Does Not Buy Better Education
American taxpayers have already been spending $600 billion per
year on public elementary and secondary schools, with average per-pupil
expenditures nationwide approaching $11,000 annually. In the District of
Columbia, the per-pupil spending figure is over $16,000 per year—among the
highest for any city in the United States. Yet DC’s public schools are the
worst in the country, as measured by student scores. Detroit likewise spends
about $16,000 yearly on the education of each public school pupil. Yet, when
tested, fourth- and eighth-graders in that city’s public schools read at a
level that is 73% below the national average. In Trenton, New Jersey, whose
population is more than 80% black and Hispanic, the government spends some
$20,663 per public school pupil, while the citywide high-school graduation rate
is a mere 41%. And in Camden, New Jersey, where nearly 90% of all residents are
black or Hispanic, the city spends roughly $16,000 per pupil, yet only 38.6% of
the city's public school children ever obtain a high-school diploma.
Obama Opposes School Voucher Programs
President Obama opposes voucher programs designed to permit
parents to divert a portion of their tax liabilities away from the public-school
system, and to use those funds instead to help cover the tuition costs for
private schools to which they might prefer to send their children.
Obama's opposition to vouchers is consistent with the stance of
the 3.2 million-member National Education Association (NEA) and the 1.5
million-member American Federation of Teachers (AFT). These unions rank among
the most powerful political forces in the United States. The NEA, for instance,
employs a larger number of political organizers than the Republican and
Democratic National Committees combined. Of the $59 million in combined
campaign donations which the NEA and AFT have made during the past two decades,
more than $56 million (i.e., 95%) has gone to Democrats. That figure represents
merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg, for it does not include expenditures
on such politically oriented initiatives as television ads or get-out-the-vote
efforts.
OBAMA AND GUN RIGHTS
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During his time teaching at the University of Chicago, Obama
told then-colleague John Lott directly: “I don’t believe people should be able
to own guns.”
As a candidate for the Illinois State Senate in 1996, Obama
promised to support a ban on “the manufacture, sale & possession of
handguns.”
In 1998 Obama supported a ban on the sale of all semi-automatic
guns.
While running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama spoke in favor
of federal legislation to block citizens nationwide from receiving
concealed-carry permits. “National legislation will prevent other states’
flawed concealed-weapons laws from threatening the safety of Illinois
residents,” he said.
That same year (2004), Obama spoke in favor of banning gun sales
within five miles of a school or park, which would have effectively shut down
almost all gun stores.
Senator Obama supported Washington, DC's comprehensive gun ban,
which prevented district residents from possessing handguns even in their own
homes; required that long guns be kept locked and disassembled; and lacked a
provision allowing the guns to be reassembled in the event of an emergency.
OBAMA AND ACORN: A CORRUPT, UNHOLY ALLIANCE
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Obama Worked for ACORN
In the early 1990s, Barack Obama worked for Project Vote, the
voter-mobilization arm of the pro-socialist community organization ACORN.
Moreover, Obama was the attorney for ACORN's lead election-law cases, and he
worked as a trainer at ACORN's annual conferences, where he taught members of
the organization the art of radical community organizing.
“All of You [Will] Help Us Shape the Agenda”
During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama was a featured
speaker at one particularly notable political event in which ACORN played a
prominent role—a December 1, 2007 forum exclusively for thousands of community
organizers from across the United States. He was introduced to the crowd by
Deepak Bhargava, ACORN's leader of community reinvestment and fair housing. In his
introductory remarks, Bhargava characterized America as “a society that is
still deeply structured by racism and sexism.” In his subsequent remarks, Obama
said: “[B]efore I even get inaugurated, during the transition we're gonna be
calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda. We're gonna be having
meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have
input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America.”
“I've Always Been a Partner with ACORN”
In a 2007 interview with ACORN representatives, candidate Obama
said the following: “You know you've got a friend in me. And I definitely
welcome ACORN's input. You don't have to ask me about that. I'm going to call
you even if you didn't ask me.... When I ran Project Vote, the voter
registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it....
Once I was elected, there wasn't a campaign that ACORN worked on down in
Springfield that I wasn't right there with you.... Since I have been in the
United States Senate I've been always a partner with ACORN as well.... I've
been fighting with ACORN, along side ACORN, on issues you care about my entire
career.”
ACORN and Corruption in Obama's 2008 Campaign
Obama's 2008 presidential campaign furnished the ACORN affiliate
Project Vote with a list of donors who had already contributed (to the
campaign) the maximum amount of money permitted by law. Anita Moncrief, a
former Washington, DC staffer for Project Vote, later revealed that her
organization had contacted these big donors and urged them to give money to
Project Vote—money which could then be funneled directly into the Obama
campaign coffers, thereby evading election-law limits on campaign
contributions.
Obama's 2008 presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an
ACORN front group known as Citizens' Services Inc, whose headquarters were
located at precisely the same address as ACORN's national headquarters in New
Orleans, Louisiana, for voter-registration services.
As the 2008 presidential campaigns progressed, ACORN began to
make headlines for two major reasons. First, the organization was under
investigation in 14 separate states for massive voter-registration fraud.
Strongly pro-Democrat, ACORN claimed to have registered 4 million new voters
during the preceding four years. Many tens of thousands of these registrations
already had been found to be fraudulent—they bore phony names, fake or
nonexistent addresses, inaccurate personal information, duplicate signatures,
etc. The full extent of the fraud, however, was impossible to determine.
Obama Deceptively Minimizes His Ties to ACORN
In an October 15, 2008 presidential debate, Republican John
McCain raised the issue of Obama’s ties to ACORN. Obama replied to McCain as
follows: “The only involvement I’ve had with ACORN was I represented them
alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor
voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.”
Obama also stated that his presidential campaign had not used
ACORN's voter-registration services—deceptively omitting the fact that it had
paid $800,000+ to the ACORN subsidiary Citizens' Services Inc. for
voter-registration services.
OBAMA & THE POLICIES THAT LED TO THE HOUSING & ECONOMIC
CRISIS
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Obama Litigates in Favor of Pressuring Banks to Make Risky Loans
to Minorities
In 1993, attorney Barack Obama took a job as a litigator of
employment and voting-rights cases with the law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill
& Galland. In a 1994 class action lawsuit known as Buycks-Roberson v.
Citibank, Obama and his fellow Davis Miner lawyers represented ACORN in
pressuring Citibank to make more mortgage loans to marginally qualified black
applicants.
As author Jerome Corsi points out: “ACORN Housing, then a nationwide
organization with offices in more than 30 cities, used the Citibank litigation
to push the group’s radical agenda to get subprime homebuyers mortgages under
the most favorable terms available.”
Four years later, a beleaguered Citibank—anxious to put an end
to the incessant smears (charging racism) that Obama and his fellow litigators
were hurling in its direction (to say nothing of its mounting legal
bills)—settled the case by agreeing to increase its lending to minority
applicants who failed to meet traditional loan criteria. Thus was a veneer of
legal legitimacy given to the disastrous lending practices that eventually
mushroomed into the subprime-mortgage debacle and, ultimately, the
housing-market crisis of 2008—a crisis Obama blamed largely on the “greed” of
Wall Street bankers and the excesses of free market capitalism.
Obama's stance in favor of lending practices like those promoted
in Buycks-Roberson were consistent with the dictates of the Community
Reinvestment Act (CRA). Put in place by the Carter administration in 1977 and
reinforced aggressively by the Clinton administration in the early 1990s, the
CRA mandated that banks, in the spirit of “social justice,” make special
efforts to seek out and lend to mortgage applicants—particularly nonwhite
minorities—who failed to meet traditional loan criteria. As Forbes magazine
points out, “Obama has been a staunch supporter of the CRA throughout his
public life.”
Obama commonly takes issue with opponents who would prefer to
permit the banking industry to function without a meddlesome federal government
forcing it to engage in lending practices that defy common sense. He routinely
accuses those adversaries of seeking to repeat “the same policies that got us
into this mess in the first place.” But in fact, the policies that created the
“mess” were precisely those government-imposed measures that Obama himself
supported.
