The distracting benefits of ACORN hysteria

House Votes To End Federal Funding For ACORN Following Uproar

WASHINGTON — The House voted Thursday to deny all federal funds for ACORN in a GOP-led strike against the scandal-tainted community organizing group that comes just three days after the Senate took similar action. "ACORN has violated serious federal laws, and today the House voted to ensure that taxpayer dollars would no longer be used to fund this corrupt organization," said second-ranked House Republican Eric Cantor of Virginia.
The vote, on a provision attached to a student aid bill, was 345-75, with Democrats supplying all the "no" votes.
On Monday the Senate voted 83-7 to deny housing and community grant funding to ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
Republicans accelerated their attacks on the liberal-leaning group a year ago when ACORN, in conducting a massive voter registration drive, was accused of submitting some false registration forms. LinkHere

Earlier this week, I wrote about how the Fox-News/Glenn-Beck/Rush-Limbaugh leadership trains its protesting followers to focus the vast bulk of their resentment and anxieties on largely powerless and downtrodden factions, while ignoring, and even revering, the outright pillaging by virtually omnipotent corporate interests that own and control their Government (and, not coincidentally, Fox News). It's hard to imagine a more perfectly illustrative example of all of that than the hysterical furor over ACORN.
ACORN has received a grand total of $53 million in federal funds over the last 15 years -- an average of $3.5 million per year. Meanwhile, not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars of public funds have been, in the last year alone, transferred to or otherwise used for the benefit of Wall Street. Billions of dollars in American taxpayer money vanished into thin air, eaten by private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, led by Halliburton subsidiary KBR. All of those corporate interests employ armies of lobbyists and bottomless donor activities that ensure they dominate our legislative and regulatory processes, and to be extra certain, the revolving door between industry and government is more prolific than ever, with key corporate officials constantly ending up occupying the government positions with the most influence over those industries.
Exactly as one would expect, the prime beneficiaries of all of that pillaging continue to grow. The banks that almost brought the world economy to collapse but then received massive public largesse because they were "too big to fail" are now bigger than ever; as The Washington Post delicately put it: "The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance." Everything involving the government turns out well for these "behemoths" because they own and control the U.S. Government. Just this week, The Post detailed how the government and Wall St. are now so intertwined that banking executives are spending vast resources to increase their presence in Washington
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UPDATE: John Cole highlights what might be the most telling aspect of all of this: demands for a "Special Prosecutor" into Obama's so-called "relationship with ACORN" from the very same circles that vehemently objected to investigations into torture, illegal government spying, politicized prosecutions, military contractor theft, Lewis Libby's obstruction of justice, and virtually every other instance of Bush-era act of criminality. Those, of course, are the very same people who, before that, demanded endless inquiries into Whitewater and Vince Foster's murder. There's nothing more valuable than petty, dramatic "scandals" to distract attention from what is actually taking place.
UPDATE II: The American Spectator's Joseph Lawler responds by claiming that the tea-party movement is every bit as devoted to combating the extreme corporate influences I highlight here as it is the likes of ACORN ("it is the same right wing that uncovered ACORN's crimes that opposed the same marriage of state and big business that Greenwald complains about"). Sorry, but that's just ludicrous. I have no doubt that there are people attending these protests who are non-partisan, non-discriminating and principled in their opposition to government corruption, expansion and excesses. That's because there's no real coherent message to these protests; it's just amorphous anger which likely has numerous causes among the various participating constituents: Ron-Paul libertarians, paleoconservatives, LaRouchians, Southern race resenters, social conservatives, GOP operatives, standard dittohead liberal-haters, etc. Each group has a different agenda, often wildly divergent. The only thing they seem to have in common is that they hate Obama.
But look at who the lead supporters are: Rush Limbaugh, the Murdoch-owned Fox News, Glenn Beck, the right-wing blogosphere and talk radio generally, business groups led by Dick Armey. Does anyone actually believe that was motivates them is concern over the excessive, corrupting influence of Wall Street and large corporations in government? Please. They are pure GOP partisans who are exploiting citizen anger to undermine Democratic politicians in order to return the GOP to political power. It's nothing more noble or profound than that. In fact, many of the movement leaders are among the most vocal advocates for unfettered corporate power. From the expansions of the Surveillance State and endless imperial power to strident opposition to lobbyist reforms, they support the very policies that most empower those corrupting groups and further the government-corporate merger. If they're so concerned about excessive government power, debt and corporate influence and corruption, where were they during the Bush era? Cheering it all on. They didn't discover their "small-government principles" until Barack Obama was inaugurated and it became a means for undermining his administration and recovering from Republican political ruin.
As for ACORN, nobody is apologizing for them or suggesting that they've done nothing wrong. Any group that large will have individuals in it who do bad things. The issue is one of proportion. If someone ostensibly opposes government waste and unfairness in tax policy yet spends most of their time focusing on a tiny group that helps the poor and receives a miniscule amount of government money -- all while ignoring or even revering the enormous, omnipotent industries which eat up trillions in taxpayer waste and dwarf the impact of ACORN by many, many magnitudes -- then any rational person would question what the real motives are [and the claim that ACORN is "Now Eligible for up to $8 billion" is pure Beckian deceit; they (like every other group in the U.S.) are theoretically "eligible" for any stimulus funds in the areas in which they work, but they haven't received a penny of it, and the chances they'd receive all or most of it are, and always have been, zero].
LinkHere

An Exclusive Clip From Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'

Michael Moore's highly-anticipated documentary "Capitalism: A Love Story" opens September 23 in New York and Los Angeles and nationwide October 2, and Huffington Post has an exclusive clip.
The film looks into the root causes of the worldwide financial meltdown. As seen below, Moore explores the early ties of Merrill Lynch to the White House in the days of Ronald Reagan.
LinkHere