Anti-ACORN Crusade Backfires In Irony (Updated!)

I have been restraining myself from writing a post about ACORN for some time now. It isn't that I haven't had plenty of thoughts about the faux scandal and the right-wing-media-led poo storm and subsequent political lynching that followed; I simply felt that there were so many other people writing about it who probably did the subject more justice than I myself could (like Glenn Greenwald [1] and Joe Conason [2]).

So why am I writing about it now? Well, you may not know this about me, but there is little I enjoy more than people being called out on their hypocrisy (I have great respect for those incredibly rare journalists who actually hold politicians and the media accountable for their non-stop hypocrisy, hypocrisy which tends to be especially prevalent among conservative figures). One thing I might appreciate more than exposed hypocrisy, however, is irony. And what happens when you put hypocrisy and irony together? Well you get Congress's recent vote to defund ACORN.

For those who haven't been following the saga, let me first briefly recap how we got here:

First, we had two right-wingers--James O'Keefe [3] and Townhall.com columnist Hannah Giles--who, armed with a hidden video camera*, decided to dress up as a pimp and prostitute duo and went to multiple ACORN offices to try to get the employees there to say something stupid on camera. Why did they do this? Well, let's ask O'Keefe himself [4]:

James O’Keefe, one of the two filmmakers, said he went after ACORN because it registers minorities likely to vote against Republicans: "Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization," O’Keefe told The Washington Post. "No one was holding this organization accountable."

[More background on O'Keefe available here. [3]]

Well, at least they aren't shy about their motivations. So apparently these two conservatives made the calculus that any organization that gets minorities or poor people registered to vote and involved in their own democracy is a direct threat to the political power of the Republican Party, and thus must be stopped. This is, of course, the transparent rationale behind the right-wing crusade against ACORN [5]. We all know it, we aren't idiots, yet it usually goes unacknowledged. And most conservatives are smart enough not to explicitly admit it. They prefer to obfuscate their motivations in distortions about what the organization actually does [6]. O'Keefe apparently didn't get the memo that you aren't suppose to freely admit that it is all shamelessly political.

So we have these two smear entrepreneurs who head out on their mission to try to entrap ACORN employees being stupid. Out of the handful of ACORN offices they visited (actually we have no idea how many they visited, they could have been rejected by 10 offices for every one that agreed to help them for all we know), they were turned away [7] from at least one office, police reports were filed against them [8] in at least two, and in one case the ACORN employee involved suspected a hoax and decided to try to shock them right back [9] with outrageous comments including a lie that she murdered her ex-husband (this statement Fox News ran wild with, before bothering to check with the police to actually verify the untimely death of the ex-husband who, it turns out, is actually quite alive). Nevertheless, despite these setbacks, the filmmakers were able to get video of a few ACORN employees saying very stupid things, and in some cases giving illegal advice (even though some of them turned around and reported the duo to the police right after they left).

And that is of course all it took to set off the right-wing on their latest campaign to tar and feather ACORN. Media Matters did a good job of describing what happened next [9]:

Fox was running so wild with the story that they were willing to lower their already dubious standards. The first problem was one of logic. Four videos were being promoted as unimpeachable proof that all of ACORN is equally corrupt -- all 1,200 chapters and hundreds of ACORN employees. It was the opposite of how a credible investigation is supposed to function, in which conclusions are withheld until after all the facts are in. By comparison, here, the conservative media had a few isolated facts but were willing to extrapolate an entire thesis from them.

The filmmakers also lied [7] by claiming that every ACORN office they visited was complicit (when they obviously weren't, as noted above). Fox News promoted this, and other blatant lies, in their attempt to take down ACORN. They also managed to guilt the rest of the mainstream media into joining in on their journalism-free crusade [10].

And without missing a beat House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) had introduced H.R. 3571 [11], the "Defund ACORN Act", which unconstitutionally [12] sought to punish the entire organization by stripping all federal funding, despite the fact that ACORN hadn't been tried or found guilty of anything, and despite the fact that all of the wrongheaded employees in question had been quickly fired (even the ones who filed police reports). Sadly this knee-jerk (and again, unconstitutional [12]) legislation garnered bipartisan support as it shot through Congress with the kind of breakneck speed that would have made the Patriot Act jealous.

It was at this point that I really got steamed. To think of how many billions of dollars the "defense" industry defrauded the federal government out of in Iraq alone [13]--between Halliburton and all of the other recipients of gigantic no-bid contracts--without even a blink from these same people who led the charge against ACORN. Never was their any talk from them about defunding these corporations, cutting off their contracts, or even investigating the scale of the fraud. (For more information about the disgusting amount of fraud in our outsourced war in Iraq watch "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" [14]. It is absolutely appalling.)

What about Blackwater USA, which had five employees indicted on 35 counts each, mostly manslaughter, for their role in a 2007 massacre of 17 Iraqi civilians and the wounding of over twenty more? I would like to suggest that that is just slightly more immoral and criminal than a few poorly paid employees of a grassroots advocacy organization saying stupid things on film. Just maybe. Yet where was the "Defund Blackwater Act"? Where were these same people and their crusade for justice in Congress? Where was the 24/7 news coverage from Fox News denouncing this criminal organization and voicing disgust that taxpayer dollars were funding these heinous acts? (Heinous acts done in our name, with America's reputation on the line).

Of course there wasn't any outrage, not from conservatives at least, because Blackwater doesn't register poor people or minorities to vote which, after all, is the real measure of criminality. They couldn't have been more transparent and hypocritical if they tried. It had nothing to do with right vs wrong, and it had nothing to do with legality, with taxpayer money, nothing of the sort. It had everything to do with trying to prevent American citizens of a particular demographic profile from having a voice. Period.

So that was the hypocrisy, and there was more than enough to go around. Then came the wonderful irony.

It turns out that in John Boehner's pathetic attempt to make the bill not look like a blatantly unconstitutional bill of attainder [12] he included some very broad wording [15] that targeted the defunding toward pretty much any organization [16] that has defrauded the federal government, or has been indicted for some violation of federal or state election law, or has any institutional involvement with anyone who has any such history. Basically the bill unintentionally targeted a hell of a lot more than just ACORN, including some big time corporate friends [17] of its sponsors, like "defense" industry giants Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Halliburton subsidiary KBR and DynCorp, as well as countless other companies (probably including major health insurance companies as well).

Oops!

Seriously, how hilarious is that? They pass a hypocritical bill aimed at singling out an organization that hasn't been indicted, let alone found guilty, of any wrongdoing in what they are ostensibly punishing it for, only to accidentally vote to cut off all federal funding for a bunch of their big military-industrial complex buddies who actually have swindled the United States and American taxpayers out of billions of dollars. Talk about poetic justice.

But of course justice will never have its day. The second their mistake was noticed you can be sure an army of staffers in John Boehner's office were probably hard at work to draft tiny one line amendments to sneak into the next bill that comes along that read something like "Amend the Defund ACORN Act to exclude Halliburton, Boeing, Lockheed Martin" etc. Or, maybe an easier way to do it would be to just drop the pretense altogether and write "Amend the Defund ACORN Act to only defund organizations that, among many other beneficial projects, encourage democratic participation among poor and minority groups, who we'd rather not vote."

I just hope that if conservatives in Congress start dropping in loopholes for their corporate sponsors, the media will start actually doing their job and shine a big ugly spotlight on the hypocrisy, corporate fraud, and cronyism that is endemic among this circle of friends.

Or maybe they'll get lucky and be able to avoid it all if/when the bill is ruled to be unconstitutional. Hopefully next time Congress decides to go on a knee-jerk safari against whomever Fox News and Drudge tell them is "bad" they'll actually pause, wait for all of the facts to come in, and maybe even use a little brain juice before choosing to highlight what pathetic sheep they are.

Hmm, I wonder how much time and money the government is going to end up wasting as they go through the necessary process of identifying every organization that gets money from the federal government that qualifies for full defunding under the criteria laid out in the bill. Then will come the lobbying, the lawsuits, the appeals, the backroom deals. But hey, that is what happens when you have irresponsible children drafting shortsighted legislation. Did we really expect anything better from them?

* Note: Making audio recordings of people without their knowledge is illegal in Maryland is illegal, so ACORN is now suing O'Keefe and Giles [18]. I expect Congress to pass the Defund O'Keefe and Giles Act by tomorrow afternoon.

UPDATE: Jason Linkins at HuffPo [19] wrote along the same lines about the epic fraud hypocrisy in Congress, but included some striking examples of just how outrageous this double standard is:

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.

And while we're on the subject of ACORN, which had a handful of employees busted for offering assistance to a fake pimp and his fake prostitution business, let's consider the case of taxpayer-funded contractor DynCorp -- its employees actually, LITERALLY, did service a prostitution ring in Bosnia in August of 2002. Girls between the ages of 12 and 15 were involved. And then six years later, employees of the very same contractor went to Iraq and DID IT AGAIN! And this time somebody got killed.

That's one government contractor, two war zones, two continents, two prostitution rings, one known death, zero consequences. What has your member of Congress done about it? SOD ALL, that's what! And DynCorp is still "supporting U.S. interests worldwide."

These are of course just a few examples of the outrageous things big time corporate military contractors have done and gotten away with, without any uproar from the conservatives in Congress or the media who are all but foaming at their mouths to destroy this network of grassroots community organizations. The hypocrisy is suffocating.

UPDATE (9/25): Here's a great segment by the always great Rachel Maddow on the corporate-backed demonization campaign against ACORN and the media's failure to cover it fairly:

UPDATE (10/2): I just have to add this great floor speech by Sen. Bernie Sanders on this subject. He nails it: