here you have acorn. was that the sole architect speakership a lot of people were influenced by him to get acorn, high officials, international union, public officials. hillary clinton, and our secretary of state wrote her senior thesis on him. she thought he made some tactical decisions but was supported. barack obama, the president, wrote an essay in the book that was sort of honoring sol. so there are a lot of people have -- >> president obama also worked as an attorney for acorn, or isn't that true? >> he gives. >> said people say he did not. do you know if he did or didn't work for acorn? >> was he a paid staff lawyer for acorn, no. but were the case that acorn was involved in that they would refer to obama, yes there were. i actually talk about a case that is related to the financial crisis in the book. it evolved in 1994 days in chicago where they were three individuals african-americans who claimed they were being racially discriminated against by citibank. because they were denied mortgages and h

he said acorn had pushed this. you said the studies prove there is not so then what was acorn getting out of it? >> guest: a couple of things. i argue it is not about fighting discrimination but income redistribution. >> host: because often with acorn you'll see they try to get housing for people that are poor or cannot get and. they are looked upon as a good service organization. what do you say? >> guest: not in this case at all. with the cra day force banks to make loans to their constituents the people who were not credit worthy. they also used the cra to shake down banks. there would go to banks seeking a merger and said it you set up this program and lead to people in the community and make grants to our organization will not make a big stink or accuse you of being racist. but if you don't give us the grantor make the loans, we won't her going to declare you're a racist bank and we will oppose you going getting federal approval for the merger on the ground they were failing to meet the credit needs of your co

host: the group acorn is back in the news this morning. the justice department has not awarded any federal grant money directly to the poverty group over the last eight years but $200,000 as mad as way to the organization or its -- has made its way to the organization or its affiliates. in 2000, it was required to provide $290,000 for the committee citizens of new york city to run a crime stoppers program. they had a $20,000 contract with acorn to coordinate with local policeman. an acorn appellate receive the congressional earmark for $138,000 to provide you leadership for students in new york to form a cornyouth -- a cornyouth to coordinatea tocornyouth. host: our next caller, go ahead. caller: they are talking about the second stimulus package coming out. the first one has not been doled out yet. that is because it takes a while to bid on construction jobs and to get those people to work. all i am saying is that it takes time to get the money out into the public. host: you say your own state has suffered from high unemployment rates, es

think that we now have a very large variety of media from which we are likely to, call this thing with acorn for example and a couple of simple guerrilla filmmakers. i haven't seen the whole thing, but here a couple of amateurs seem to be having an impact on public policy and public perception. in any event. at the moment where this might spill over into the health care debate. who knows? >> host: you're talking before about this sanctimony that you could never criticize the american establishment. you couldn't say -- you just could never say that russia might be bad, there's a little bit of that now. you can't criticize agencies that work with the government and when we begin to say well, a court is human. the people that work there might be susceptible to corruption, given the amount of money flow and around. oh, my god, is this even possible, the same drama around a corner. another one of thinking, the media, you remember in the 1989, at the political turn, people believed that fact was the new medium of political change. the facts, fas, tiananmen and swear. the facts was now past. so the

the justice department -- to pay acorn. they should pay them for services provided under contract before congress banned the government from providing money. the article says since 1994, acorn has received about $53 million in federal aid, much of its grants from housing and urban development, or provide in services relating to affordable housing. our phone call comes from north carolina on the democratic line. go ahead. you have the line. caller: thank you for taking my call. i want to speak on something they were talking about a minute ago about unemployment among minorities and high-school dropouts. i believe if every high-school should have at least one high school -- every school system should have won a high-school that is trade-oriented. you have people who cannot do it, they drop out of school and go to a fast food service where the pay is minimum-wage. they get frustrated and they take to the streets. it would help the person, it would help the city and the country if we had people who came out of high school able