Then candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at an event hosted by ACORN on July 2, 2007.

We reported in this space today on ACORN's receipt of firefighting funds. That story, however, had changed radically since it broke, and since we missed it, that just goes to show how easy it can be to miss things in today's fast-paced news cycle. In any case, it is worth reading an update on the story from our partner site, TheNewAmerican.com:

More than one member of Congress wants to know how ACORN, the leftist scam that former board members call a criminal conspiracy, nearly collected close to $1 million in federal funding for fire prevention and safety.

The Washington Times reported that ACORN was slated to receive 80 percent of the Homeland Security grants intended for fire prevention and safety programs in Louisiana. The paper initially reported that ACORN had received the money, but the Obama administration then announced that the grant was killed before the money went out.

Still, Rep. Dale Issa (R-Calif.) ranking minority member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Maine’s Susan Collins, ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, wonder why ACORN was slated to receive the grant to begin with. “We are perplexed as to how this organization would even be considered for a first-responder grant,” they wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

In July, Issa’s committee staff released a report alleging that ACORN is a essentially a criminal conspiracy trespassing the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, which has traditionally been used to prosecute the Mob.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wasn’t happy about the grant either. On September 22, he wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. “I request that you rescind this grant based on a history of abuse of federal dollars by ACORN and their clear lack of expertise in this area,” Vitter wrote. A week before Vitter wrote to Napolitano, two other legislators also inquired about the money. Reps. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) and Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) members of the House Committee on Homeland Security, wrote to Napolitano with a request to rescind the money.

The cabinet agency froze the money, the Times reports, after Congress passed a spending bill on September 30.

Continue Reading at TheNewAmerican.com

 

The Obama administration and its actions are breathtaking, and not in a good way. I find myself wondering from whence these people came. They cannot be true Americans because they could not pass the easiest civics test. Might they be aliens from another solar system? Might they even be radioactive? They certainly have brought a deadly form of something to America! 

The man at the top shows neither understanding nor respect for the background, meaning, and intent of the U.S. Constitution. In addition to a total lack of common sense, the administration gives appearance of being positively obtuse. Terms like “checks & balances” appear incomprehensible to them as well “government by the people,” while the specific role and duties of the Executive branch of our Republic speed over their heads. I can often be heard yelling at the TV, “These people do not even know whether they are afoot or horseback!”

How could this administration and its supporters develop such a grab bag of flip-flop, badly-focused, illogical, unintelligent, anti-American, wrong-headed, kill-the-Constitution policies?

The answer to “How could they….?” is “The Appeal’s Arsenal of Facts 1914,” written by Fred D. Warren, published January 1, 1914 by Appeal to Reason, and addressed to “Brother Agitator.” This small 192 page book, details the procedures for converting America into a new Evil Empire. This socialist workers handbook explains more than most Americans even want to know. However, we must equip ourselves to recognize our enemies. The government has now, more than ever before, become the adversary of the people, and Obama’s plan is to “fundamentally transform America.” 

Obama’s transformational plans come right out of the “Working Program of the Socialist Party,” Adopted at Indianapolis, May 17, 1912. Read them and weep:

1. Collective ownership of all transportation, communication, and all large scale industries.  (Bailout and control of the automotive industry anyone?)
2.  Immediate acquirement by municipalities, states, and federal government of all grain elevators, stock yards, and storage warehouses.
3. Extension to public domain of all mines, quarries, oil wells, forests, and water power.
4.  Further conservation and development of natural resources to include: scientific forestation, reclamation of arid and swamp tracts, storage of flood waters and the utilization of water power (Think Hoover Dam, as one example), stoppage of waste of soil and the products of mines and oil wells, development of waterway and highway systems.  (Interstate Highway System)
5.  Collective ownership of land.  (The Department of Natural Resources sends buyers to Michigan farm and land sales. With the FED’s printing press behind them, the DNR out bids all others.)
6. Collective ownership of the banking and currency system. (The FED, financial bailouts, AIG)

The socialist plan also includes “the conservation of human resources, particularly of the lives and well-being of the workers and their families”:

1) Shorten the workday, 2) Secure for every worker a rest period of not less than 1 ½ days per week, 3) Secure more effective inspections of workshops, factories, and mines. (Think MSHA and OSHA), 4) Forbid employment of children under 16 years of age. 5) Co-operative organization of industries in penitentiaries, 6) Forbid the interstate transportation of the products of child labor, of convict labor, and of all uninspected factories and mines, 7) Abolishment of the profit system in government work and award contracts to cooperative groups of workers. 8) Establish minimum wage scales, 9) Abolish official charity and substitute a non-contributory system of old age pensions, and create a government insurance plan to protect members against unemployment, invalidism, industrial disease and death.

Now let us contemplate the demands — the other side of the same coin — of the Socialist Party:

1. Absolute freedom of the press, speech, and assemblage.
2. Adoption of a graduated income tax; extension of inheritance taxes; to be employed in the socialization of industry.
3.  Abolition of the monopoly ownership of patents and the substitution of collective ownership.
4.  Unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and women.
5.  Adoption of proportional representation, both nationally and locally.
6.  Abolition of the senate and the veto power of the president. (I guess the Obama camp forgot to read this one.)
7.  Election of the president and vice president by the direct vote of the people.
8.  Abolition of the Supreme Court’s right to overrule anything enacted by congress.
9.  The abolition of the present restrictions upon the amendment of the constitution, so that the instrument may be made amendable by a majority of voters in a majority of states.
10. Granting of the right of suffrage in the District of Columbia.
11. Extension of democratic government to all United States territory.
12. Enactment of further measures for general education.  The bureau of education to be made a department.    
13. Enactment of further measures for the conservation of health.  The creation of an independent bureau of health with such restrictions as will secure full liberty for all schools of practice. (Liberty for abortionists!)
14. Separation of bureau of labor from the department of commerce and labor and its elevation to the rank of a department.
15. Abolition of all federal district courts and the US Circuit Court of Apples. State courts to have jurisdiction. The election of all judges for short term.
16. Immediate curbing of the power of the courts to issue injunctions.
17. Free administration of justice.
18. “The calling of a convention for the revision of the constitution of the United States.” (Fundamentally Transforming America)

Beware, Americans! Think carefully about the socialists’ plans, both those already in force and those that Obama is forcing, as well as these quotations from columnist Joseph Sobran that lend important perspective:

Liberals have a new wish every time their latest wish is granted. Conservatives should make them spell out their principles and ideals. Instead of doing this, conservatives allow liberals to pursue incremental goals without revealing their ultimate destination. So, thanks to the negligence of their opponents, liberals control the terms of every debate by always demanding 'more' while never defining 'enough.' The predictable result is that they always get more, and it's never enough.

If Communism was liberalism in a hurry, liberalism is Communism in slow motion.

It is good that the attempted government takeover of healthcare has broken millions of Americans out of their decades long slumber. But to preserve liberty in the face of the socialist programs supported by the current administration and its supporters, will require continous and ongoing vigilance from all Americans, for there is much at stake.

Linda Schrock Taylor is a reading specialist and former public school teacher. She teaches English composition at a state university.

If you think the "cash for clunkers" program is all sweetness and light, and that this is an example of the federal government helping the little guy, well, think again. Apart from the very questionable constitutional basis for the program (what Constitution? Anybody see a Constitution around here?) Glenn Beck of Fox News points out that the government operated website threatens your privacy, and claims to own your computer if you happen to click on the wrong link.

Critics claim that Beck is making a mountain out of a mole hill. One of these is blogger Chris Thomas who writes of Beck's concerns:

Beck pitches the entire story as if regular consumers are going to log on to the cars.gov website and, in the course of their use, encounter this message and blithely click “ok,” thereby giving the government’s jackbooted thugs the right to check out their financial spreadsheets and boost a copy of their porn collection.

That’s not going to happen.

An astute viewer of Beck’s expose might notice that the website that Beck is browsing is blue whereas the cars.gov website is green. This is no trick of the studio lights; though he never mentions it, what Beck is demonstrating only occurs on the dealer side of the website. The consumer side - the side that anyone who is not an automotive dealer will access - is green. What Beck demonstrates is not even something that a casual user of the site could stumble upon; they would have to go looking for it.

Thomas is right, as far as he goes. Most consumers will not be faced with a message telling them that their computer and everything on it is now the property of the U.S. government. But that doesn't really improve the situation at all. Car dealers, being the entities most affected, are still supposedly private entities -- and an affront to their privacy is really no improvement over an affront to the privacy of the average citizen.

Thomas makes the other valid point that "a quick Google Search turns up more than 800 instances of the “Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system…” verbiage on a collection of public and private sites." But, what does that do to make the overreach less harmful? Actually, it makes it worse because the chance that the average citizen is going to run afoul of one of these sites is greater simply because there are more of them.

Critics have some good points to make about this, primarily when they point out that those accessing government sites need to be aware of the conditions under which they access those sites, then proceed on a "buyer beware" basis.

But that still misses the problem, namely, that government has far exceeded its constitutional bounds. If it were kept within its legitimate sphere by the Constitution, and by a wary citizenry demanding fidelity to the nation's founding law, we wouldn't see programs like the recent bailouts, nationalizations, spying programs, and cash for clunkers, among many more. And, as a result, we wouldn't have to worry about the abuses of power these programs may enable.

June 1 was the day passports, passport cards or Real ID/WHTI complaint (RFID "enhanced") driver licenses began to be required for citizens of the United States who re-enter the country from Canada at land crossings. Before June, any driver's license or birth certificate would have worked for you.

The requirement is part of the State Department's Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) that is being rolled out across Canada and the United States (and eventually Mexico). This is Real ID by another name. WHTI compliant means RFID enhanced cards. Your driver's license will still have a pretty state logo wrapper, but be clear: This is now your electronically trackable national identification card.

If unresisted, mission creep will be the means for the presentation of this card becoming more and more a part of our monitored daily lives.