Glenn Greenwald: Right-Wingers and Corporations Benefit While Media Stays Distracted with ACORN

Posted by Jan Frel, AlterNet at 2:00 PM on September 17, 2009.

Glenn Greenwald has a great post explaining how the focus on the doings of staffers at a small organization like ACORN is a useful distraction for the real crooks in the corporate world who remain uninvestigated:

ACORN has received a grand total of $53 million in federal funds over the last 15 years -- an average of $3.5 million per year.  Meanwhile, not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars of public funds have been, in the last year alone, transferred to or otherwise used for the benefit of Wall Street.  Billions of dollars in American taxpayer money vanished into thin air, eaten by private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, led by Halliburton subsidiary KBR.  All of those corporate interests employ armies of lobbyists and bottomless donor activities that ensure they dominate our legislative and regulatory processes, and to be extra certain, the revolving door between industry and government is more prolific than ever, with key corporate officials constantly ending up occupying the government positions with the most influence over those industries.

Exactly as one would expect, the prime beneficiaries of all of that pillaging continue to grow.  The banks that almost brought the world economy to collapse but then received massive public largesse because they were "too big to fail" are now bigger than ever; as The Washington Post delicately put it:  "The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance."  Everything involving the government turns out well for these "behemoths" because they own and control the U.S. Government.

...

ACORN isn't just being mentioned in passing as something that needs an examination; it's dominating headlines and the obsessions of the Fox News movement, despite the fact that it's a tiny, microscopic drop in the bucket even when assessed by the principles the protesters claim to support [by a vote of 345-75, the Democratic-led House just joined the Senate in voting to cut off all funds to ACORN; I'm sure the courageous Congress will be doing that to Blackwater, KBR, Citibank, lawbreaking telecoms and many other corrupt corporations who own them any moment now).  Claiming you're worried about large government and taxpayer waste while fixating on ACORN proves the insincerity of the ostensible concern, let alone doing so while cheering on the same Wall Street banks, defense contractors, and insurance industries that control and expand government power for their own benefit.

Read the rest here.

Tagged as: right-wing, glenn greenwald, acorn, sting