Friday, August 22, 2008

Obama's Acorn Problem   [Stanley Kurtz]

There is a new story out in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about some questionable Obama campaign spending reports and Obama’s troubling ties to ACORN. Obama may well have used the Chicago Annenberg-Challenge to channel money to ACORN (and other radical groups of "community organizers"), few or none of whom had particular expertise in improving public education. This, I fear, may be one of the main reasons why the Chicago Annenberg Challenge failed to make any measurable improvement in Chicago’s public school system. Of course, I’ve already written about Obama’s ties to ACORN in "Inside Obama’s Acorn," and I’ve got much more on Obama’s questionable role in funneling money to ACORN in "Senator Stealth," my new piece in the print edition of NR. Obama’s early work for ACORN, his later Woods Fund help for ACORN, and his Annenberg role as a funder of local community organizers (who did a very poor job of improving education, the actual purpose of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge), and the role of all this in Obama’s political ambitions is one key thread connecting all these stories. So this is one key reason why I want to see those library records.

08/22 02:51 PMShare