House Proceeding 09-24-09 on Sep 24th, 2009 :: 1:53:45 to 2:00:20
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1:53:45 to 1:54:06( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: and intimidated the bangs into giving money -- banks into giving money to acorn. not just the first round. this wn't give loans to the people in the inner city, it was write a check to acorn and we'll go away. sometimes they would go into the lender's off over to the wall, surround that lender, and intimidate him,

1:53:45 to 2:00:20( Edit History Discussion )
Speech By: Steve King

1:54:07 to 1:54:27( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: yell at him, shout at him, and make demands. and eventually the intimidation tactics work because banks wanted them to go away. so sometimes they wrote the check and sometimes they went away. oftentimes they came back after a passage of time and began the process all over again.

1:54:28 to 1:54:49( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: now, one demand was the shakedown that compelled -- gave a strong incentive for lenders to write the check to acorn. that helped fund acorn. you also heard of this taking place from other organizations. rainbow push comes to mind. they wrote the check to get acorn off their back. then acorn went away. then they came back and they did that over and over again. and at a certain point acorn

1:54:50 to 1:55:10( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: then demanded that the banks loan money into the neighborhoods that acorn specified. they did their own redlining. they drew their red line around and said, you loan money into these neighborhoods or we'll come back and we'll protest your customers can't get through the door. so banks began loaning money into those and showing their records to the acorn represent

1:55:11 to 1:55:34( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: ives and now they are that's stage two. stage three is the lenders in order to get acorn of their back after they came back over and over again and escalated this, demanded money, demanded loans be made into acorn's red line district, then the next one was, to grant acorn a block of

1:55:35 to 1:55:55( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: funds to be brokered into the communities of their choice. giving them more and more power. undermines the free enterprise system. and it gives power to people through intimidation rather than market principles or moral principles. in fact it's utterly corrupting in a society and i can't draw a moral distinction between an

1:55:56 to 1:56:16( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: acorn shakedown and a mafia shakedown or a shakedown that ght come from hugo chavez or some strong man in some other country. you will pay the protection or you will not be in business. i wonder if cargill refused to pay protection in venezuela and that's how come chavez

1:56:17 to 1:56:37( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: nation about april. this is some of the pattern of acorn's activity, mr. speaker, and it isn't by any means all of . i fact, there's -- wade rasky, the founder of acorn and was the c.e.o. until about a year ago has a brother named dale.

1:56:38 to 1:56:59( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: dale embezzled $948,000 in change from acorn. . it's a matter today of public record. they covered it up for eight ye covered up a crime, a felony for eight years.

1:57:00 to 1:57:22( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: and in order to solve the bookkeeping problem they took money from donors and money from pension plans and backfield the hole in the a the embezzlement of the broth of the c.e.o. who held cover up this crime.

1:57:23 to 1:57:45( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: and finally it blew up to the point where wade rafky that was pushed to the side of acorn. he and his brother are both engaged in, let me say, community organizing. activist community organizers, people who read the book from

1:57:46 to 1:58:06( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: salle olinsky, people who read cloward and peven and now pplwho are writing their own book -- writing their own book, the rafky brothers. we need to clean up this mess that's acorn. this congress has a responsibility. we know it now.

1:58:07 to 1:58:27( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: i offered an amendment to rid acorn in 2007 that had not a lot of support at the time. today we've seen that congress vote on acorn and we've seen 75 members, everyone a democrat, vote against unfunding acorn. we know what our duty is. our duty is oversight. it's our constitutional responsibility, mr. speaker. and we need to use all of the

1:58:28 to 1:58:49( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: tools that we have in this congress to drill into acorn, to get to the bottom of it, to bring the truth and the facts out. that will require with all of these r house alone, and i call upon the senate as well to engage in this, but in the house alone we

1:58:50 to 1:59:12( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: must have full investigation and hearings on the judiciary committee taking a look at the voter registration fraud that we know exists and look at it on a national scale. and from this we need to drill rotten aprilles that are in there -- apples that are in there.

1:59:13 to 1:59:33( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: and if there's anything left that has integrity, and i don't know any company that's not judiciary committee has an obligation to investigate where there are violations of the law. and whether violations of voter registration and election fraud. that's our responsibility in the judiciary committee.

1:59:34 to 1:59:55( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: government reform, and it's been headed up very well in governme reform by congressman issa of califoia. needs to look at this from the standpoint of how is government tied to this and what does it do to corrupt our government, and what about all the reach into government? how many places are the working in cooperation with the government?

1:59:56 to 2:00:16( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: and let's sever all of those relationships. that's the government reform component of this. and to the extent that we can overlap and cooperate, we should do so committee by committee. we need to go into the financial services committee. chairman frank needs to come all the way around to cleaning up acorn. he was not here for the vote

2:00:17 to 2:00:21( Edit History Discussion )

Steve King: that would have unfunded acorn. he had a couple of different