<p><img class="caption" src="images/stories/saul_alinsky_community_organizer.png" border="0" alt="Saul Alinsky Community Organizer" title="Community Organizer Saul Alinsky" hspace="7" align="middle" /></p>
<p>A Saul Alinsky-tied group has been awarded a $56 million <a id="KonaLink0" href="#">federal loan</a> to start up a nonprofit health insurance company -- one of several organizations across the country this week tapped to launch a new network of insurers under the sponsorship of the federal health care overhaul.</p>
<p>The Wisconsin group, Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative, was awarded the funding on Tuesday. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the group is expected to provide coverage statewide within five years after starting on a smaller scale in early 2014.</p>
<p>But Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson questioned the group's credentials -- given its affiliation and lack of experience in the insurance field.</p>
<p>"The indisputable fact is that Common Ground was an outgrowth of the Alinsky operation in <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/topics/entertainment/music/broadway/chicago-the-musical.htm#r_src=ramp">Chicago</a>," Wilson said. "We're not giving money to a group with experience in health care issues or in setting up exchanges. ... We're handing the money to people who have been trained by arguably the single most expert individual on community organizing in the last 100 years."</p>
<p>Common Ground, a Milwaukee group that dates back to 2004, is an affiliate of the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation.</p>
<p>Alinsky, who died in 1972, is regarded as the godfather of community organizing but has also emerged as a bogeyman of the right. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has weaved Alinsky's name into his campaign message, repeatedly hammering President Obama as an "Alinsky radical." Like Alinsky, Obama traces his political and activist beginnings to the Chicago world of community organizing.</p>
<p><br /><br />Read more: <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/23/alinsky-tied-group-awarded-56-million-federal-loan-for-health-insurance-project/#ixzz1noiNE3tw">http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/23/alinsky-tied-group-awarded-56-million-federal-loan-for-health-insurance-project/#ixzz1noiNE3tw</a></p>