Media Ignores Huge News In Acorn Defunding Act
"WANKERS"
The Unintended Consequences Of The "Defund ACORN" Act This past Tuesday, HuffPost's Ryan Grim posted a story that rivetingly demonstrated the comedy of the Law of Unintended Consequences. In its zeal to quickly and unthinkingly get on the side of hammering ACORN for its recent transgressions, Congress passed the Defund ACORN Act, a measure written so broadly that it could apply to just about anyone! In other words, Congress made a decision to apply robust oversight to all manner of government contractors by mistake.
In a postscript to his blog post on Tuesday, Glenn Greenwald wrote: "Along those lines, if we had a real media, what [Grim's] article reports about the bill to de-fund ACORN would be huge news." He's absolutely right! This is actually an extraordinary story, that ably illuminates the dysfunction at the root of our government and the scintillating stupidity of a culture more interested in preserving seats than actually serving constituents.
First, let's go back and look at what happened:
The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to "any organization" that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.
In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.
To his credit, Representative Alan Grayson, a rookie Democrat from Florida, out-thought and out-maneuvered all of his colleagues and quickly went to work with the Project of Government Oversight (POGO) to compile a list of contractors that "might be caught in the ACORN net."
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman both popped up quickly, with 20 fraud cases between them, and the longer list is a Who's Who of weapons manufacturers and defense contractors.
Did you know that Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman had 20 fraud cases between them? And that your Congress didn't care? It's true! Furthermore, let's allow POGO to put all of this into perspective:
Bear in mind that, since 1994, ACORN has reportedly received a total of $53 million in federal funds, or an average of roughly $3.5 million per year. In contrast, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman respectively received over $35 billion and $18 billion in federal contracts last year. (Their totals since 2000 are $266 billion for Lockheed and $125 billion for Northrop.)
Congress should clamp down on contractor fraud and waste, but it needs to keep a sense of proportion. If ACORN broke the law it, should be punished; however, Congress also needs to crack down just as rigorously on the contractors who take an even larger share of taxpayers' money and have committed far more, or far more egregious, acts of misconduct.
And consider this! A taxpayer-funded contractor for Blackwater USA got drunk and murdered an Iraqi in the Green Zone back in October 2007. That's a month after Blackwater employees went on a killing spree in Nisour Square in Baghdad. The taxpayer-funded contractors who guard the State Department facilities in Kabul spend their time taking photos of each other "peeing on one another, simulating anal sex, doing 'butt shots,' and 'eating potato chips out of ass cracks.'" Halliburton, another government contractor, bilked the Pentagon to the tune of $100 million dollars, and basically covered it up through lies and accounting tricks. LinkHere
In a postscript to his blog post on Tuesday, Glenn Greenwald wrote: "Along those lines, if we had a real media, what [Grim's] article reports about the bill to de-fund ACORN would be huge news." He's absolutely right! This is actually an extraordinary story, that ably illuminates the dysfunction at the root of our government and the scintillating stupidity of a culture more interested in preserving seats than actually serving constituents.
First, let's go back and look at what happened:
The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to "any organization" that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.
In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.
To his credit, Representative Alan Grayson, a rookie Democrat from Florida, out-thought and out-maneuvered all of his colleagues and quickly went to work with the Project of Government Oversight (POGO) to compile a list of contractors that "might be caught in the ACORN net."
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman both popped up quickly, with 20 fraud cases between them, and the longer list is a Who's Who of weapons manufacturers and defense contractors.
Did you know that Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman had 20 fraud cases between them? And that your Congress didn't care? It's true! Furthermore, let's allow POGO to put all of this into perspective:
Bear in mind that, since 1994, ACORN has reportedly received a total of $53 million in federal funds, or an average of roughly $3.5 million per year. In contrast, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman respectively received over $35 billion and $18 billion in federal contracts last year. (Their totals since 2000 are $266 billion for Lockheed and $125 billion for Northrop.)
Congress should clamp down on contractor fraud and waste, but it needs to keep a sense of proportion. If ACORN broke the law it, should be punished; however, Congress also needs to crack down just as rigorously on the contractors who take an even larger share of taxpayers' money and have committed far more, or far more egregious, acts of misconduct.
And consider this! A taxpayer-funded contractor for Blackwater USA got drunk and murdered an Iraqi in the Green Zone back in October 2007. That's a month after Blackwater employees went on a killing spree in Nisour Square in Baghdad. The taxpayer-funded contractors who guard the State Department facilities in Kabul spend their time taking photos of each other "peeing on one another, simulating anal sex, doing 'butt shots,' and 'eating potato chips out of ass cracks.'" Halliburton, another government contractor, bilked the Pentagon to the tune of $100 million dollars, and basically covered it up through lies and accounting tricks. LinkHere
To the Dems Who Voted to 'Defund ACORN': Where is the Defund Blackwater Act?
Democrats joined Republicans in voting to "Defund ACORN," yet have done nothing to stop Blackwater's ongoing taxpayer-funded crusade in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Republican Congressional leaders are continuing their witch-hunt against ACORN, the grassroots community group dedicated to helping poor and working class people. This campaign now unfortunately has gained bipartisan legislative support in the form of the Defund ACORN Act of 2009 which has now passed the House and Senate. As Ryan Grim at Huffington Post has pointed out, the legislation "could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex:"
Republican Congressional leaders are continuing their witch-hunt against ACORN, the grassroots community group dedicated to helping poor and working class people. This campaign now unfortunately has gained bipartisan legislative support in the form of the Defund ACORN Act of 2009 which has now passed the House and Senate. As Ryan Grim at Huffington Post has pointed out, the legislation "could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex:"
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 2:12 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home