I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work. — Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, November 2007
The excuse parroted by most newsmedia for failing to give Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a full vetting, such as they are doing with Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, is that “after 20 months of campaigning and debate,” all is known about the senator. Wrong!
For instance, how many voters know that Obama, during his four-year tenure in Chicago as a community organizer, worked as a trainer for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — the infamous ACORN, whose affiliate, Project Vote, is known for voter fraud — the same ACORN from which a mighty mortgage mess has grown. Upon his return to Chicago after Harvard Law School, Obama provided legal representation for ACORN and for Tony Rezko (recently convicted of bribery and money laundering), who was Obama’s main money man during his years in the Illinois State Senate. Rezko had helped the Obamas purchase a home in Chicago’s politically correct Hyde Park. Obama sat on the boards of the philanthropic Woods Foundation and the Joyce Foundation, both of whom funneled millions of dollars to ACORN.
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)
Which community activist/political organization in the United States is the largest, most radical left, and most untrustworthy? The answer is ACORN, which bills itself as the nation’s largest community organization for the rights of low- and moderate-income families. Its hidden agenda, however, is to change the form of the U.S. government from a republic to a socialist oligarchy, using class warfare and the aid of radical liberals within the Democrat Party. This hidden agenda explains why the liberal newsmedia go mute on Obama’s ACORN ties.
ACORN, which began in 1970 as the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now, evolved into the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. It was the brain-child of Wade Rathke, a well-to-do Williams College dropout who had worked for George A. Wiley at the National Welfare Rights Organization. Professor Wiley was a charismatic African-American PhD in chemistry at Syracuse University when he began his venture into social and political change — much like Obama. Wiley, however, came from a well-to-do family in Rhode Island.
Both Wiley and Rathke were influenced by Chicago’s radical activist Saul Alinsky and by the strategies set forth in his books, Reveille for Radicals (1964) and Rules for Radicals (1971). Disruption, intimidation, physical abuse, and ability to adapt to shifting political events are mainstays of the Alinsky rules and his end-justifies-the-means mentality. Rathke had been active in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), known for its violence, and in the domestic terrorist group, the Weathermen, which bombed government offices. William Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, Chicago friends of Obama, also were members of SDS and the Weathermen. Obama chaired the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, funded by a grant obtained by Ayers. For six years, Obama and Ayers worked closely on this liberal boondoggle meant to improve education that was terminated in 2002.
The Cloward-Piven Strategy
Columbia University sociology professors Richard A. Cloward (1926-2001) and his wife, Frances Fox Piven, also influenced ACORN leaders. In 1966, the husband-and-wife team promulgated the Cloward-Piven Stra | 
