How ACORN Helped Defund the Entire Military Industrial Complex
Well, maybe not all — but there’s some nervousness out there. After yesterday’s post on why reducing spending and government is so tough — today I find that Congress has just enacted a way to really cut back on expenditures that I whole heartedly endorse:
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.
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.
Anyone laughing yet? Rep. Greyson is planning on filing a list of organizations charged with “breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency” or with employees so charged so that judges can be really clear who got defunded. Want to help him build the list? Greyson set up a Google Spreadsheet where you can suggest contractors to add.
And apparently there are some other constitutional hurdles for this ACORN bill, but I love that this may have just functionally put out of business a huge swath of the military industrial complex. PleasePleasePlease, Democrats, do NOT fix this without getting multiple pounds of flesh out of it…..
Tags: ACORN, Republican Bamboozlement
tee hee thanks for this! Saves me from having to write it.
Mike Greenberger was talking about Grayson the other night. He said Grayson is the Karen Peterson of Congress.
I can’t tell you how much I adore this story. Congress accidentally produced a good bill! I hope we get as much attention on Lockheed Martin and Northrup Gumman as we did on ACORN.
Here’s another interesting ACORN story. The person in the video seen advising the “pimp” on underage Guatemalan girls called the police. I’m sure Fox News will play this news on endless loop, because Fox is fair and balanced, right?
I am not the biggest supporter of the military,but I think some military research might have helped the development of the internet and satellite communications. Sometimes they have done research on things the private sector did not want to chance doing because there was not short term profit,although there were long term benefits.
If the cuts are not highly selective ,it may be throwing the baby out with the bath water
John,
The problem was with the way the bill was written. It was written broadly so that it wouldn’t be a bill of attainder but it was written extremely broadly. It also goes back to what we discussed before with ACORN. No one is excusing the content of the tapes but ACORN’s crimes pale in comparison with some big government contractors.
Gee John, what a ridiculous take on this post. Sorry, but where is your head? The idea that you elide over the ACORN’s baby tossing and focus in on *gasp* the horror of a close vetting of military-industrial spending.
No one is saying that such spending isn’t absolutely tied to real and fundamental ways that have helped to establish American technological and R&D superiority.
Problem is that you can’t seem to articulate that ACORN is equally as valuable. Just for a vastly different population to protect, that would be the poor, underemployed, undereducated and otherwise most vulnerable individuals in our society.
My title probably should have included a wink. I have no doubt that the military industrial complex will get their money even if they have to send collectors to each of our houses to get it. What I love about this story is how short-sighted the manufactured outrage is. In trying to take out their bete noir, repubs have taken out huge swaths of the constituencies they want to hand more money and more power to.
The consequences of playing for politics rather than principles I’m thinking.
Nancy,
I was not making a judgement of ACORN which I think does fine work in general, just that some of these issues may be more nuanced than the discussion seemed to be implying.
If I misunderstood the discussion, I stand corrected and apologize.
Have a great day.
This action could unemploy hundreds of thousands of good people who work alongside our national defense to help keep our nation safe and enable us to defend against those who would like to destroy us. And not only would it hurt many outstanding citizens but our economy as well in a time when our economy doesn’t need more holes blown in it. Lockheed Martin spends literally millions of dollars for ethics training and goes through great lengths to ensure integrity among its employees and ensure its dealings are ethical. It frequently performs self audits as well as independent auditing. Acorn doesn’t do any ethics training at all, is riddled with corruption and won’t even let the Feds look at their books. Acorn told the reporters “Thank you” for bringing this issue to the surface and are now suing them for it. These two types of organizations (corrupt activist group and national defense) do not compare in the size or scope of wrong doing and should not suffer the same sentence.
“These two types of organizations (corrupt activist group and national defense) do not compare in the size or scope of wrong doing and should not suffer the same sentence.”
True. The defense contractors engage in such practices repeatedly and for far larger sums of money. Sorry, James, but half a trillion a year to buy big toys for big boys who are afraid to do any fighting themselves is neither protecting me nor a good use of the money. They deserve stiffer punishment
How can you say our men and women defending and dying for our nation everyday are afraid? Whether it is the Marine on the ground with a gun, an Air Force pilot in a jet, a sailor on an aircraft carrier, or a mission planner in the States, these people are brave and are serving and dying for you and the rest of our country to preserve your way of life. Many of the defense contractors are exmilitary. Others are deployed where the fight is serving and supporting along side the military. They server the warfigher in whatever postion they are in. What gratitude.
Up your reading comp skills, James — rhubard refers to the professional highwaymen employed by the contractors not to the troops.
I’m saying that they are one. The war fighter depends on the defence contractors and the defends contractors are often prior military. As far as dying, defence contractors in Iraq blow up and have blown up just like active duty military.
I know alot of military guys who would kick your ass over that, James. Trying to make contractors and uniformed guys into the same Team is contractor propaganda at its best. Especially since this nation apparently values its contractors (measured in money) a whole lot more than its soldiers.
They are on the same team, they are on the same side and support the same cause.
Yes, but they do it for a lot more money.
That’s relative. Some military make more money than contractors. Some contractors make more than some military. A supervisor may make more money than another employee in the office but you don’t fire the supervisor because of that. They still work for the same company and are working towards the same company goals. It’s equal opportunity. People who are in the military are in by choice. Many military choose to get out of the military and become contractors. If they do that do they become the “bad guys”?
You are speaking to a contractor.
Most of the contractors make more than the uniformed guys do. Period.
And contractors and uniformed guys are not the same team. Although I get that you need to live with that bit of propaganda to justify making sure that contractors get a river of taxpayer money. And certainly these uniformed guys do not have the same track record of unethical behavior as some of the contractors do. And you can find the answer to that difference in that contractors and uniformed guys are playing for very different stakes.
We’ll, cassandra m, I guess if you’re a contractor, and you have rivers of money, you’ll be just fine if and when the government defunds your company along with Acorn. And since you’re not on the same team supporting the military, I guess they won’t even notice when you’re gone. But that’s not the case for all contractors.
Which isn’t helping you argument that contractors and uniformed guys are on the same team, now is it?
And my company has never 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.” NEVER. Unlike Lockheed Martin or any of the usual highwaymen, which tells you that we are very small fish in the pond, but definitely not in danger of being defunded.
“these people are brave and are serving and dying for you and the rest of our country to preserve your way of life”
Yes, they are brave. But they are serving and dying not for me, but for corporate America. The government doesn’t even bother lying about this — they refer to it as “protecting American interests overseas.” Frankly, I have no interest in preserving that way of life. I wouldn’t want them using my tax money to preserve the overseas interests of an individual American, and I’m not interesting in using it to preserve the interests of corporations.
The corporations are the “bad guys”? People are coming from all over the world illegally and legally to the ‘land of opportunity’ because they understand that someone who has nothing can come here and, with hard work, make a better life, aka The American Dream. They understand that this is not nearly as attainable anywhere else in the World. How come some of our own citizens don’t see that I’m not sure. Even our president, who grew up very poor and a child of a foreigner, ended up pulling himself up out of poverty, attending Harvard, and eventually became the President of the most powerful nation in the world. These corporations are both the end result and the tools of a free society and provide competitive jobs and innovations. Sometimes there is greed and there is corruption but that is because of individual morals of some not corporations.
And yes, the military fights to protect our country and our way of life and all its citizens therein. So unless you’re here illegally they fight for you too.
“These corporations are both the end result and the tools of a free society and provide competitive jobs and innovations.”
Do they pay you to lick their balls, or do you do it because you like the taste?
Yea that’s mature. Throw insults instead of facts.
James – That’s how the liberals around here do things.
Hey rhubard, I bet Obamas cock tastes just as good as the contractors balls. Don’t spit it out.
It appears to me that many do not really appreciate the freedoms that our founders suffered and died for or at least they are not grateful or maybe they just don’t know. But they shortsightedly attack those who do appreciate them and work to tear down the things that make this country strong such as marriage, military, family, God, our godly American heritage, good values, prayer, and unity and even the Bible which our great Constitution is solidly based. This is very unfortunate and our country will suffer the consequences – school shootings, parents killing their families, children killing their parents, broken homes, crime, drugs, corporate corruption, government corruption, and social injustice, destruction of innocent unborn children, rampant sexual diseases, pain and suffering in many forms and eventually destruction, probably if not from a meltdown then from enemy attack. In the early part of the nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville from France said:
“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her harbors and her rivers, in her fertile fields and boundless forests, and it was not there.
“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and in her institutions of learning, and it was not there.
“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution, and it was not there.
“Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.
“America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
Look around, we may be about there.
I have looked around, James, and if you still think — after Iraq, for example — that America is good, you’re pretty much beyond hope.
The founders did not suffer and die for government contractors to screw the American people out of tax dollars.
But do note that James resorted to the “call out their patriotism” tactic here once he no longer could defend his own fact-free position.
More of the usual weak tea from these people.