War Handwavium

From the Huffington Post:

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.

Whoops indeed.

See, the right wing took ACORN and whipped it into a right wing feeding frenzy about all that is “wrong” about government. What mainly is “wrong” about ACORN is they helped register poor and underrepresented citizens in poor neighborhoods. That usually translates into Democratic voters, which angers the Republicans. So they found ACORN employees doing naughty things, convinced their base that it was systemic to ACORN as an organization, and quickly passed legislation to cut funding to ACORN.

OK. Fine. But you can’t legislate something specifically to cut funding from ACORN. Laws can’t punish specific individuals, they have to punish any individual who behaves in a certain way.

So, what they did was pass a law that defunds any organization who acts fraudulently.

OK. Fine. Except that sort of behaviour has occurred in giant military industrail companies. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) went through the database and immediately found that Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman both qualify for ACORN-style defunding due to the 20 cases of fraud between them. Blackwater is another group that committed fraud against the government.

Actuallly, I think defunding fraudulent companies is a good idea. As long as it’s implemented in a behavioural way, not specifically calling out ACORN, but calling out and defunding ANYONE who commits fraud. The problem is, this bill was rammed through by the Right, and the Right is probably going to have an issue with the defunding of the military industrial complex that they hold dear to their hearts.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/22/whoops-anti-acorn-bill-ro_n_294949.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/help-him-help-us-by-digby-couple-of.html