Jeremy Scahill: ACORN Got Pennies Compared to War Contracting Firms- Their Crimes Pale in Comparison
By Heather Saturday Sep 26, 2009 5:00pm
Rachel Maddow with the second half of her report on the political witch hunt of ACORN and the problems that the De-Fund ACORN Act is going to bring for private war contractors if it actually passes.
As Rachel notes the De-Fund ACORN Act has a bill of attainder problem. The Constitution prohibits the legislature from enacting bills of attainder, which means the De-Fund ACORN Act must also include "any company that's ever been indicted for breaking campaign finance laws, or that's ever filed fraudulent paperwork with any federal agency". That means a good deal of our military contractors are going to be swept up under the law as well and it cannot only be enforced against ACORN.
Rachel reads off a list of all of the military contractors that would have their funding cut off and goes into the list of other crimes like murder, prostitution and contract fraud that they have committed as well which pale in comparison to what ACORN has been accused of.
Jeremy Scahill is asked whether the war contractors are worried about this law touching them. His answer. "Hell no." It's all about politics and too many in Congress are bought and sold by our military industries. And as he notes, ACORN got pennies when compared the massive sums of money these private contractors received.
And as Media Matters has documented, the media has done their part to hype the ACORN corruption story while completely ignoring the real fraud that Scahill talks about in this segment.
SUMMARY: In light of the recent attention Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have devoted to a supposed corruption scandal involving ACORN, Media Matters for America reviewed the coverage each host has provided on his respective television programs to a selection of well-documented political scandals and instances of corruption by companies that have received thousands of times more money from the government than ACORN has in the past 15 years. Our findings show that both hosts have been obsessed with ACORN, devoting a massively disproportionate amount of attention to the story in comparison to their coverage of controversies involving military contractors that have received billions of dollars in federal contracts and instances of Republican corruption at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Furthermore, since Beck joined Fox News, the amount of attention he has devoted to ACORN has skyrocketed, while his interest in other corruption scandals has remained limited.
Please go read their entire report but I wanted to share the charts they provided there to show just how slanted the media coverage has been on this issue.
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I knew that already. I knew it was all a FOX concoction intended to rile up racists and anti-american lunatics.
Are Afraid of the Little Guys.
Additionally, why are they not reporting on the low approval ratings of the republicans..less than 19%...?
Dems who voted to defund ACORN are stoopid. I'm calling Kucinich's office on Monday to demand an explanation as to why he would vote on such an obviously unconstitutional act.
..its not an illegal act but if passed would shut off the public funding of criminal organizations like halliburton and kbr. I say, LET'S pass it and NOW! Anything to stop funding kbr and xe.
But sadly, it will not pass; it makes too much sense to defund criminal organizations like the ones mentioned. Remember where you are: Wonderland, up is down and right is wrong and murder is patriotic. I wonder who the losers really are?
Jeremy Scahill here
Jeremy Scahill here
Because there cannot be too much Jeremy Scahill
thanx for that.
You know of course that these facts are not able to be understood by inbred racist, birther, truther,commie socialist facist hating,Beckerhead RushPill fans,Trailer Popes,neo-nazis,hydro cephalus headed,backwoods shitheel, baby sister raping,gun toting,obese, ugly, insane,O'Reilly scholars, right?. Right.
it is a worse offense to organize minorities in this country, than to kill scores of innocent civilians half a world away.
Furthermore, it is a worse offense to use tax dollars to help American citizens and their health care, than it is to waste billions/trillions in pointless wars that help no one.
Compassionate bunch they are, eh?
War is profitable - community organizing COSTS them profits.
It really isn't an ethical question when profit knows no ethics.
I'm used to people like Michele Bachmann talking about things like the "Hoot-Smalley" act (aka, by thinking people, "Smoot-Hawley"), but I expect better from C&L.
It's not an "act" (which can easily be reversed by another "act"), it's part of the Constitution (Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3).
--Kibitzer
Kibitzer is quite correct, and in addition it only applies to criminal acts as anyone who can use wikipedia could have easily verified:
A bill of attainder (also known as an act or writ of attainder) is an act of the legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without benefit of a trial.
of what a bill of attainder was from Wikipedia and mangled it. I don't want to make excuses but this got churned out on Friday night after a long day and I didn't have time to give it a decent second look today since we had a family reunion all day and my husband decided he wanted to leave about an hour earlier than I expected. We've also been a bit short handed on editorial help since Dave was up doing Glenn Beck watch all day and John had some dental work done today.
I'll get it corrected after I make sure I don't get the wording of the correction wrong as well. We do care that our posts are accurate here and I appreciate the mistake being pointed out so we can fix it.
I really meant to add it :). C&L is great.
--Kibitzer
Thank you Rachel for covering these very important stories. I overheard some dumb ass woman at my daughter's soccer game today praising how Fox covered stories others don't. Then I heard her mention ACORN. I didn't want to know exactly what she was saying because I knew I'd get angry and blow up. My husband had already had a heated discussion with her at the last game over healthcare.
It's getting harder and harder to leave the house, isn't it?
..teh stoopid. Wait for an easily debunkable statement and then just correct them. Be calm and cool, that really pisses them off. And even if you don't change their thought processes, people within earshot begin to think for themselves. You start to smell all this wood burning as brains try to digest truth. Glorious!
the dead pan approach my favorite weapon , without a doubt , responding to these critters ( or anyone really ) is not to directly argue aginst them . Rather to make them expain the source ie: i didnt know that , where did you find that ? , really ? , something about giving them enough rope .
Its so much more fun ( imho ) watching some one aruge with themself .
Plus this is less likely to alienate those hearing the exchange while making you sound more and more credible.
To spicegal...there are times when biting your tongue can be extremely rewarding. This was such a time because you don't want to take away from viewing your daughter's soccer game or causing a scene.
You made the right choice. Kudos for being a responsible parent at your child's sporting event.
because ACORN is helping the poor keep their homes out of the banks hands.
I'm a real estate agent in Florida. I went to an ACORN meeting for homeowners in danger of losing their homes.
Everyone was given good solid advice on what to do, including being told that ACORN would help them assemble the docs needed, and then get people hooked up with help from the Feds.
They were told that the mtg companies are not looking to help them keep their homes, not to trust them to negotiate fairly.
That's why ACORN had to be destroyed - they were irritating the banks.
Lou Dobbs sucks.
"Ban Fox News" bill..?
Or the "Shut down ClearChannel" bill for that matter?
that the Dems should treat Blackwater with the same oversight as the Republicans want to apply to Acorn!
Rachel Maddow is THE BEST. She CUTS THRU THE CLUTTER better than anyone else on cable TV these days.
The sad thing is that what she is doing is such a simple thing to do. She is a person with an honest mind, honestly doing her job. That's all that it takes to perform at her level.
so uncommon as common sense
...this law may do ACORN, I sincerely hope that they pass it. It may end up being the single greatest thing done to rein in the military-industrial complex that has ever been devised. If worse comes to worse, ACORN can be helped in ways not related to government funding, but these corporations who routinely engage in criminal activities as they rip-off the government (read that the The People) will be up shit creek, if they are held to the level of accountability that this law requires. To my thinking, that's a situation that is about 50 years overdue.
BTW, all of these antigay-marraige laws also constitute, in addition to violations of the equal protection clause, bills of attainder. Are any of them being challenged on those grounds?
...when Fox had him by the neck and was wondering what to do with him..."Whatever you do, Br'er Fox, Doan throw me in that briar patch, oh no, I'd just HATE IT if ya threw me in the briar patch, pleeeese doan throw me in the briar patch...."
(for the ignint Lurking Troll who might be reading this and wondering what this lefty kook is babbling about, an explanation:
This is a comic device from an old folk tale-I know, I know, but it's older than Disney Cartoons-it's an exercise in irony, which as we all know, right-wing idiots such as yourself are, um, shall we say, irony-challenged, which is a liberal-PC phrase meaning dumb as a stump. The Irony involved here is that Br'er Rabbit is perfectly at home in de briar patch, and he's pretending to be terrified at the thought of being "briar-patched" by Br'er Fox, so as to induce the apparently stupid Br'er Fox to give him exactly what he wants which is to dive full-tilt into the briar patch in order to escape. How does this relate to the current tizzy over ACORN? Well, if you idiots manage to stampede the idiots in congress into passing a bill that bans businesses that commit fraud or break other laws, while you are busy whoopin' it up and slappin' each other on the back over your great victory, smartass liberal commie jew lawyers from NEW YORK CITY will be filing stacks of lawsuits against the government for not cancelling contracts with neonazi-enabling criminal enterprises like XE, Halliburton, etc. See?)
In poker terms: we'll see your ACORN, and raise you a DYNCORP!
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