Updated: Could the Righties' Hatred of Acorn Take Down the Entire Military-Industrial-Media Complex?

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 6:00 PM on September 23, 2009.

I haven't read the text of the legislation, but here's what Ryan Grim is reporting over at Huffpo ...

Going after ACORN may be like shooting fish in a barrel lately -- but jumpy lawmakers used a bazooka to do it last week and may have blown up some of their longtime allies in the process.

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.

Grim concludes that the legislation "could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex."

Boy-howdy, could it ever ...

For a while, I was writing often about the corrupt contracting endemic to the Iraq occupation (see, for example, "Iraq's Reconstruction a Boondoggle by Design"). And one thing became very clear about the contracting process: huge, multi-faceted umbrella contracts were dished out to big, politically connected companies that didn't have anywhere near the amount of varied expertise -- or personnel -- to fulfill them. They weren't expected to; their primary function was to serve as a go-between for a huge network of subcontractors and the agencies tasked with "fixing" the devastated country (mostly State and DoD, but several others had fingers in the pie).

Essentially, the government outsourced the oversight of the work it was outsourcing.

So, every big defense company was in Iraq, and every one of them had a mass of subcontractors. And setting aside the big swindles -- and there were many, including a bunch that were prosecuted -- everybody had a sub-contractor or employee who cut a few corners, submitted a fraudulent report here and there. According to the Inspector General's reports (a good one is linked in that piece I pointed you to), it was routine. When a State Department procurement rule requires you to go out in the middle of a shooting gallery and risk your ass to personally certify that you inspected some concrete your Indian workers laid down for the Jordanian construction firm you hired, you're not actually going to go. You're going to file a document attesting to the fact that you did the deed.

Of course, the idea that this Acorn legislation would be used to dismantle the defense contracting industry is fantasy, for obvious reasons. But the fact that it could in theory highlights what a poorly thought-out piece of crap the legislation really is.

Update: TPM reports:

The Louisiana Democratic Party has a funny new online petition, targeting Republican Senator David Vitter, and his campaigns against ACORN.

The petition calls upon Congress to defund David Vitter, citing Vitter's own past involvement with prostitutes.

Tagged as: corruption, acorn

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.