It’s great to be a prisoner in Obama’s America: you get stimulus dollars, preferential job placement, and a place in AmeriCorps. But if you’re a child in public school, watch out.

Obama said he was going to build a civilian army — and he is using our children. He is recruiting in public school classrooms: I exclusively broke the story about how his group Organizing for America is recruiting in the classroom. But AmeriCorps (can Obama pronounce the second syllable?) is the primary machinery for his youth army. And there is huge dough behind it — yours and mine. And that money is now being used to mandate service programs that indoctrinate our children to work for “the common good.”

America is the most beneficent nation in the world. We give the most to charity (though Republicans far out-give Democrats), and whenever there is a disaster in the world, we are there. On a local level, we donate a ton of money to community programs.

So why is service being mandated? Mandated service is slavery. Voluntary service is empathy. Empathy is the positive result of a moral value system, as taught in a proper educational curriculum.

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I participated in listen-only mode in the teleconference call Monday in which ACORN’s allegedly independent “audit” was released.

I regret it was difficult to make out what the players were saying.

That’s because as the left ferociously circled the wagons, all the creaking wheel noises in the background drowned out much of what was said.

Scott Harshbarger, ACORN ally and former attorney general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

One the main points that ACORN ally and former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger and ACORN CEO/chief organizer Bertha Lewis were trying to make was that ACORN, i.e. the lead entity that controls the ACORN network, and ACORN Housing, are separate entities.

Because ACORN Housing and ACORN are different organizations neither is responsible for the other, they argued. In other words, ACORN is not responsible for ACORN Housing employees caught on video encouraging illegal behavior, and vice versa, they reasoned.

Harshbarger said on the conference call

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Lots of attention—appropriately—is being paid to the federal government’s new, extended reach into the private economy, setting salaries and owning auto companies.  But, beneath the radar, a combination of Obama Administration initiatives is  extending government influence over philanthropy and charitable organizations, as well.   

New tax rules may pull up to $7 billion away from private charity—at a time when six of ten United Ways already report steep drops in giving.  And a new White House office (of Social Innovation)  will make its own grants to non-profits—but only for select purposes. 

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President Obama announced he plans to nominate Patrick Corvington to be chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America. Big Government readers will remember that “the Corporation” assumed a prominent role on the infamous NEA Conference call, where ”the Corporation’s” Nell Abernathy joined White House and NEA officials to nudge artists to produce works supporting the Obama Administration’s legislative priorities.

Although the charity Corvington works for, Annie E. Casey Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland, has granted funding to ACORN during his tenure, it is unclear if Corvington has ties to ACORN.

Nonetheless, Corvington is part of the same cluster of organizations that provides financial and other support for ACORN which is a longtime fixture in the activist community.

Since 2001 the Annie E. Casey Foundation has pumped at least $1,705,500 into the ACORN network, according to philanthropy database information.

Of the $1,705,500, at least $850,500 was earmarked for ACORN operations in Baltimore, Maryland, home of the ACORN branch office first shown in the recent undercover videos that debuted on BigGovernment.com. Those videos show James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles pretending to be a pimp and a prostitute and receiving mountains of advice on evading laws pertaining to tax evasion and prostitution (among other things).

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a major funder of other groups on the left.

Looking at just the first letter of the alphabet, its grant recipients are labor federation AFL-CIO, abortion rights think tank Alan Guttmacher Institute, and liberal policy shop the Aspen Institute.

Although most of its grants go to groups on the political left, the foundation has funded at least one think tank on the political right. It has provided a few grants to the American Enterprise Institute.

The Obama Administration has placed a large premium on what it calls “national service.” It has launched a website, www.Serve.gov, that is reported to act as a clearing house for Americans eager to “give back” to their communities. Unfortunately, Americans looking for an opportunity to volunteer may get something they weren’t expecting.

By typing “ACORN” into the search field entitled “What interests you” at Serve.gov, you’re transported to allforgood.org where you can choose from a list of volunteer opportunities, including “healthcare activist.” This particular “volunteer” opportunity is with the Tuscon ACORN office:

The description after clicking:

They’re unclear regarding financial reimbursement; though past recruitment, like the Craigslist ads in St. Louis, advertised for “paid progressive activists, $90 a day, call Lorna 314-732-0131.”

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In my last post, I noted the millions of taxpayer dollars flowing into ACORN’s housing corporation and that at least twice, Democratic administrations have caught ACORN misusing taxpayer money allocated for community work. To understand ACORN’s repeated scams, it’s important to know that the group has again and again been accused of funneling government grants to ACORN’s political and labor activism (in effect using our money to fund their growth).

It didn’t take long after the group’s founding in 1970 to work its way into the radical Left and sign up for government largess. After Jimmy Carter took office, the group used its connections to win a contract worth almost $500,000 to train community volunteers under the VISTA program.

It took virtually no time for the group to show its true colors. The grant was no small thing; the Heritage Foundation concluded, “It appears that the VISTA grant was crucial to the survival of ACORN.” The money may have helped the far-left group, but the results, as you might imagine, were not pleasant:

Under the ACORN/CORAP grant, VISTAs engaged-in blatantly political activity in Arkansas and Missouri, while five VISTAs were active in a labor organizing campaign in New Orleans.

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