Our Democracy in Microcosm
Earlier today, Glenn Greenwald linked to this story on his Twitter feed and commented: "If we had a real media, this would be a huge story: sums up everything, and therefore will be ignored."
The story really is a perfect encapsulation of the current state of American politics:
I can't think of a better way of illustrating the double standard at work here. Republicans have singled out a group to demonize based on the supposed bad acts of a few employees. Based on these incidents, we're supposed to conclude that the entire organization is corrupt and unworthy of continued existence. But when you apply that very same standard to defense contractors, they fair no better than ACORN.
The GOP's obsession with optics over substance is also on full display here. In their rush to capture headlines and grandstand, they didn't bother to consider what the law they were proposing would actually do. Everything is a game, including the lawmaking process.
And the Democrats didn't exactly bathe themselves in glory here either. Rather than reject a hastily thrown together and poorly thought out bill, most of them took the path of least resistance and voted for the bill. It was a perfect demonstration of the kind of fecklessness and political cowardice that pervades the Democratic caucus.
Every headache this bill ends up causing lawmakers is deeply, deeply deserved.
The story really is a perfect encapsulation of the current state of American politics:
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.The reason the bill was crafted this way was because you can't just target a single person or organization. So instead, the Republican lawmakers who (hastily) drafted the bill chose to make it apply to groups whose employees have been charged with the kind of conduct some ACORN employees have. The problem, of course, is that most large organizations who interact regularly with the federal government, including any number of major defense contractors, have had employees charged with fraud against the government.
In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) picked up on the legislative overreach and asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to sift through its database to find which contractors might be caught in the ACORN net.
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Gumman 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.
The language was written by the GOP and filed as a "motion to recommit" in the House, where it passed 345-75.
I can't think of a better way of illustrating the double standard at work here. Republicans have singled out a group to demonize based on the supposed bad acts of a few employees. Based on these incidents, we're supposed to conclude that the entire organization is corrupt and unworthy of continued existence. But when you apply that very same standard to defense contractors, they fair no better than ACORN.
The GOP's obsession with optics over substance is also on full display here. In their rush to capture headlines and grandstand, they didn't bother to consider what the law they were proposing would actually do. Everything is a game, including the lawmaking process.
And the Democrats didn't exactly bathe themselves in glory here either. Rather than reject a hastily thrown together and poorly thought out bill, most of them took the path of least resistance and voted for the bill. It was a perfect demonstration of the kind of fecklessness and political cowardice that pervades the Democratic caucus.
Every headache this bill ends up causing lawmakers is deeply, deeply deserved.
posted by A.L. at 9:18 PM
14 Comments:
Honestly I would of voted for this bill just for the reason you stated :)
Good ol kick in the military industrial complex's teeth...
Thank god we are dealing with this rather than Afghanistan, unemployment, health care, global warming, the economy, Iraq, the banking mess, the energy crises, Middle East peace, poverty or any of the other myriad of real issues this country needs to deal with.
No doubt SteveAR, mls and others will be along soon to instruct us as to why this is all the liberal's fault and a vast, far-reaching Obama conspiracy.
Until then, thanks A.L. for your spate of postings lately. You and Glen Greenwald are a nice bright light of reason.
And what Matt said.
What? Congress wrote a bill that is poorly thought out and has unintended consequences? That never happens.
Thank goodness this is a different Congress from the one that is carefully redesigning every aspect of the health care system.
Maybe, but cowardly like a fox. When the defense contractors start to weigh in, the thing will die. Hopefully that will be a big story -- that Lockheed and Xe come to the defense of Acorn. Har.
'Thank goodness this is a different Congress from the one that is carefully redesigning every aspect of the health care system'
See people? Look at the nice mental gymnastics. All the explicit or implicit lies in this cute little sound bite, yet so empty of fundamental content. Let's completely skip over the question of whether we need health reform or how to go about reforming health care. Instead let's conflate the lawmakers (whom mls agrees with and supports) who led the attack on ACORN (an attack which mls agrees with and supports) and wrote a moronic bill (which mls agreed with and praised) with the lawmakers (of the opposing party, whom mls denigrates and opposes) working on health care. Very cute.
Conservative Republicans wrote the nasty little bill that defunded ACORN and wrote it so sloppily their allies are now open to federal de-funding. Forget defense contractors. Think of health insurance companies providing Medicare Advantage services or corporations contracted to rebuild New Orleans or the WTC under the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress.
So naturally, their short-sightedness and stupidity reflects on their opposition. How many intellectually dishonest rhetorical tricks was that in one two-sentence phrase? I think I caught deflection, a strawman, a false comparison, and an ad hominem attack... anyone catch anything else?
Thank goodness this is a different Congress from the one that is carefully redesigning every aspect of the health care system.
Actually it's not. The clowns who wrote this bill, thankfully, won't have any input into the health care bill, because they don't care about health care. Democrats, on the other hand, do care. They've been thinking about health care reform and health care policy for decades. Very smart people have devoted their careers to studying and formulating health care policy. Entire think thanks are devoted to it. Very smart people have been circulating and revising draft legislation on this issue for decades.
That's the difference between the modern Democratic party and the GOP. The Democrats may be feckless, but their ranks are filled with a number of people (and a whole lot of staff) that really care about policy. The GOP has very few such people. That's in large part why the Bush years were such a disaster.
A good demonstration that the law of unintended consequences, like all natural laws, is neutral on the good-versus-evil scale.
Actually, I'd like to know if any in Congress voted for this bill precisely because of its side effect on the usual suspects.
I'd send them money, because such altruism deserves reward.
It'll be very interesting to see who torpedoes it. It goes without saying that there's no way this is going to take effect in the case of the military-industrial complex.
er, that was a thing of beauty.
I must confess I too would be willing to defund ACORN as the unfortunate price to pay for ripping so many corrupt defence contractors off the taxpayers' teat.
Like Acorn, all of the too-big-to-fail corporate giants have someone somewhere willing to defraud the government. This is expected and natural which is why we have regulatory bodies in government and business in general.
Too big to fail means existential liability to America. This bill is just what the doctor ordered. Force them all off the public teat and keep forcing the bad apples off the teat with a very visible hand in a swatting motion.
its no fun when the rabbit has the gun......
I love the fact that they wanted to make a bill they called "the defund ACORN Act" constitutional, so they made this screw up. Why didn't they just say "any national organization of black people helping poor people" since that's who they really want to attack?
I wasn't going to comment because I agree mostly with what A.L. says in the post (not in his comment to mls). What's comical is that Grayson was one of the 345 who voted for the legislation. The only question, and it is a question, is whether a "Defund ACORN Act" would actually be a bill of attainder since ACORN doesn't actually have a right to public money, and taking it away, even by name, isn't the same as targeting the group or any member of the group for prosecution. Is there any case law that would say refusing to continue funding a particular group is considered a bill of attainder?
But what brought me here was this from wildwill:
Why didn't they just say "any national organization of black people helping poor people" since that's who they really want to attack?
Is that what ACORN is, a national organization of black people? That would seem to indicate ACORN is discriminatory in its hiring practices, which is illegal. Although I don't think that's the case since at least one of those people in the videos (San Bernadino) was a white woman. Even with that, I wouldn't consider ACORN an organization of white people.
Maybe wildwill might want to clarify his statement.
What's comical is that Grayson was one of the 345 who voted for the legislation.
In a podcast interview of Grayson done by Glenn Greenwald this morning Grayson's public take on this is fairly clear. He's going with the spin that he's all in favor of legislation of this kind. Thinks it's just great, and is devoted to seeing it applied to every contractor the federal government employs. He's probably only half bullshitting when he says it.
He's utterly astute, and knows that this is the last thing it's proponents truly wanted. Many of them rely on the votes of old style, libertarianesque Republicans who agree with Grayson's public stance on this issue.
It's the best served cut of schadenfreude I've had in ages.
The Senate will kill this bill as fast as an acorn falls from an oak tree. Too bad because Blackwater would be included.
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