ACORN

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is a now-defunct organization originally intended to help on matters of "neighborhood safety", voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. 
In the 2008 US Presidential Election, conservative activists decided to ignore all that and instead pick on it for two of the only good things ACORN ever did. One of those good things was its alleged assistance in helping African Americans vote — oh the horrors — and another of them came to light in 2009, when shyster James O'Keefe went undercover asking ACORN for advice on how to practice free market capitalismEven though the area of the free market in question may happen to be illegal for the time being. and then leaked the video to the public, which was hyped by Andrew Breitfart. The videos were deemed to be selectively edited and partially fabricated to make it seem like ACORN employees were giving advice on how to break the law. Lobbying for more laws and regulations is apparently okay, but giving advice on how to DIY and get off the government teat through good ol' free enterprise is apparently not.
The controversy that followed generated enough negative publicity to have ACORN's funding pulled, and caused the organization to collapse and disband in March, 2010,http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35991176/ns/politics-more_politics/ allowing people the chance to undo any of the work ACORN did helping minority groups vote.
If it weren't for ACORN's duplicity, America would not have suffered under her first Kenyan Muslim Presidential Dictatorship.
==Actual ACORN controversies==
Or, what drove the molehill mountaineering:
*During the 2008 elections, a few ACORN employees engaged in fraud. However, this was not ballot box stuffing as many claim, but falsification of voter registration forms in order to get paid for work they didn't do. In other words, laziness rather than conspiracy. The FBI was even called in and found no evidence of "widespread fraud".
*During July of 2008, the brother of ACORN's founder Wade Rathke, Dale embezzled close to $1,000,000 from the organization. Both were removed from the executive committee and the money was repaid by the Rathkes and a third donor.
*Barack Obama served as an attorney for ACORN in a voting rights lawsuit in 1995, made two donations (of $70,000 and $75,000) to ACORN in the early 2000s as a director of the Woods Fund, and donated $800,000 to an ACORN-affiliated group for a get-out-the-vote campaign. (NB: This is only controversial to wingnuts)
==Conspiracy theories==
Many of the conspiracy theories surrounding ACORN contain a mixture of some of these elements:
*ACORN disbanded to trick people into thinking it doesn't exist anymore, but it still does. ("The best trick the devil ever pulled...")
*ACORN stole the election for Barack HUSSEIN MUHAMMAD Obama through vast voter fraud.
*Barack HUSSEIN MUHAMMAD Obama is a puppet of ACORN.
*ACORN caused the banking crisis through its use of a Cloward-Piven strategy to force banks into making bad loans by manipulating Community Reinvestment Act rules and getting their bad mortgages guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This then enabled the commie takeover of banks, health care, etc.
*ACORN is preparing to lead a black uprising, headed by Barack HUSSEIN MUHAMMAD Obama, and will be used as a militia to lock white people up in FEMA concentration camps.
*ACORN is defrauding the government through stealth slavery reparations legislation.
*ACORN is helping to cover up the fact that Barack HUSSEIN MUHAMMAD Obama was born in Kenya.
*John McCain endorsed ACORN conspiracies during the 2008 campaign when he launched ads claiming that ACORN engaged in "widespread voter fraud" and had "bullied banks" into making bad loans.
==External links==
*The Politics of Voter Fraud, Lorraine C. Minnite, Columbia University
*FactCheck: ACORN accusations, The Stimulus Bill and ACORN
*PolitiFact: Beck and others repeat claim that White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard was once the political director for Bertha Lewis, chief organizer of ACORN, Michele Bachmann claims ACORN getting money to work for Census Bureau
*Conservative media consistently scapegoat undocumented immigrants, ACORN, Media Matters
*Roots of the Tea Party's Conspiracy Mania, CBS
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Organizations
Category:Conspiracy theories
Category:Left-wing activists