Griper Blade: Defunding the Military-Industrial Complex

Last week, I wrote a post on the ACORN scandal and the legislative rush to defund that organization over the revelation that some of their employees seem more than a little incompetent. By now, you probably already know the story, so I'll give you the short version -- two kids in "Pimp and prostitute" Halloween costumes managed to find some really dumb ACORN workers who gave them advice on getting government funding and hiding income for a brothel that was to be staffed by human trafficking. No crime was committed, other than by the costumed crusaders in recording people without their permission, but it was still pretty indefensible. The employees were fired, ACORN is investigating, and that should be the end of it.

But, of course, it's not. Right wing media in general and Glenn Beck in particular have decided that ACORN is trying to destroy America through communism. See, the right never let's anything go. During the '08 campaign, Republicans accused ACORN of registering voters illegally, as part of their voter registration drives. As proof, they pointed to a few registration forms filled out under false names. In some cases, temps hired by ACORN filled out the forms themselves, in others, people filled them out as a prank (signing up as "Mickey Mouse," for example). None of these forms got past the verifiers at the various state registration boards, proving that the system works. In any case, there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud and the number of forms found didn't add up to enough votes to throw an election for coroner, let alone national elections. It was a tempest in a teapot by a losing party desperate to smear their opponents as corrupt. ACORN was evil, so Democrats were evil. And, since the right wing never lets go of anything, ACORN remained evil, despite all evidence to the contrary.

So much for the short version. Anyway, in that post last week, I agreed with Glenn Greenwald, who asked why ACORN was being singled when other organizations that receive federal money are demonstrably more corrupt. "[I]f ACORN takes $3.5 million this year to help poor people -- and misuses a fraction of that money -- they're done," I wrote. "The poor are getting more help than they deserve anyway. But if Wall Street needs billions after blowing their nut on corruption, greed, stupidity, and bonuses rewarding incompetence, then we get out the federal checkbook and ask them how many they need. If Blackwater rapes and murders in Iraq, if KBR electrocutes soldiers and poisons personnel with rotten food, that's forgivable -- because they aren't poor. See, only poor people are a drain on the taxpayer. The wealthy deserve their wealth -- even if the only thing saving them from bankruptcy or prison is taxpayer money. They worked hard for that federal money, harder than you have. They deserve your money more."

And it's here that the law of unintended consequences sets in, in the form of House Resolution 3571, AKA the "Defund ACORN Act."... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]