Blue Mass Group

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Beck, Hannity obsess over ACORN while virtually ignoring major corruption scandals

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In light of the recent attention Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have devoted to a supposed corruption scandal involving ACORN, Media Matters for America reviewed the coverage each host has provided on his respective television programs to a selection of well-documented political scandals and instances of corruption by companies that have received thousands of times more money from the government than ACORN has in the past 15 years. Our findings show that both hosts have been obsessed with ACORN, devoting a massively disproportionate amount of attention to the story in comparison to their coverage of controversies involving military contractors that have received billions of dollars in federal contracts and instances of Republican corruption at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Furthermore, since Beck joined Fox News, the amount of attention he has devoted to ACORN has skyrocketed, while his interest in other corruption scandals has remained limited.

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  1. A new study by professors at Occidental College and the University of Northern Iowa examines the media’s coverage of ACORN, finding that during last year’s presidential campaign and again this year, the “mainstream” media has rushed to repeat a barrage of false claims by Republicans and conservatives about the organization without first checking to see if the claims are true.

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    • ACORN is being attacked because it was effective registering new voters, primarily minority voters who tend to vote Democratic.  Former US Attorney Iglesias says Rove and the White House wanted to use the machinery of the Department of Justice to fight the wave of voter registration.  

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      p>Those US Attorneys who did not prosecute voter fraud cases (because they saw no evidence of voter fraud) were notoriously fired in the US attorney scandal.

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      p>Brad Scholzman who was a replacement US Attorney, filed some dubious voter fraud cases which were unsuccessful.  

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      p>Progressives have a Rhodes Scholar digging into the back story in Rachel Maddow.  Conservatives have Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity neither of whom attained a college degree.  

  3. Carol Leonnig from the Washington Post has been following and (gasp) researching the ACORN attacks and filed this great story last wed.

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    Woodbridge, Va.: So the Congressional Republicans engage in a little harmless demagoguery to attack ACORN and in the process pass legislation that will bar Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, GE, Halliburton, Blackwater, and just about every other defense contractor from receiving any government funds. This sounds like a great trade off. Obama should sign the bill ASAP.

    • Congressman Jerry Nadler, somewhat of a constitutional purist, argues that the Republican Amendment singles out a specific organization by name for exclusion from participating in any federal program, in direct violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against Bills of Attainder.  

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      WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, denounced a Republican Amendment adopted by the House of Representatives to deny all federal funds to ACORN as blatantly unconstitutional and a threat to unpopular organizations everywhere. The Republican initiative, entitled the Defund ACORN Act, singles out a specific organization by name for exclusion from participating in any federal program, in direct violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against Bills of Attainder.

      “Today’s Republican Amendment is in blatant violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against Bills of Attainder,” said Nadler. “Congress must not be in the business of punishing individual organizations or people without trial, and that’s what this Amendment does. Whatever one may think of an organization, the Constitution’s clear ban on Bills of Attainder is there for the protection of all of our liberties.”

      The Supreme Court, in decisions dating back to the Civil War era, has held that the Constitution prohibits all legislative acts, “no matter what their form, that apply either to named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group in such a way as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial….” During the McCarthy era, for example, Congress enacted legislation prohibiting the use of funds to pay the salaries of three federal employees who Congress deemed subversive. The Supreme Court ruled this legislation unconstitutional as a Bill of Attainder.

      This Amendment, in addition to being clearly unconstitutional, sets a dangerous precedent of Congress punishing politically disfavored groups without any due process.

      • …I would expect the government has every right to decide who does and does not get to receive public funds, including this level of specificity.  I assume decisions like this are made all the time as part of the plenary power to contract and appropriate money.

        • I’m no lawyer, but I looked it up and found a couple of interesting lines in Wikipedia.

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          A bill of attainder, is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without judicial trial and includes any legislative act which takes away the life, liberty or property of a particular named or easily ascertainable person or group of persons because the legislature thinks them guilty of conduct which deserves punishment.

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          p>for instance,in jolly old England ……….

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          The word “attainder”, meaning “taintedness”, is part of English common law. Under English law, a criminal condemned for a serious crime, whether treason or felony (but not misdemeanor, which referred to less serious crimes), could be declared “attainted”, meaning that his civil rights were nullified: he could no longer own property or pass property to his family by will or testament. His property could consequently revert to the Crown or to the mesne lord.

          Bills of attainder were sometimes criticized as a convenient way for the King to convict subjects of crimes and confiscate their property without the bother of a trial-and without the need for a conviction or indeed any evidence at all.

          The first use of attainder was in 1321 against the Earl of Winchester and the Earl of Gloucester, who both shared the name Hugh le Despenser (Where both were attained, not for opposing the King, but for supporting the King) and the last in 1798 against Lord Edward FitzGerald for leading the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

          • …Is this money ACORN’s property and is the government trying to get it’s money back?  I assumed that whatever money was already given to ACORN is out of play and to requisition it would at very least be a breach of contract, but that this was about whether ACORN would continue to receive public money.  Any of us, for example, could decide on a whim we will no longer patronize a certain business due to it’s practices (the Hyatt for example due to the labor controversy which has been discussed here).  We wouldn’t go to the Hyatt and demand our money back for times we have already stayed there, but we can change our spending habits going forward.  I understand the point on the merits regarding ACORN vs. these other recipients, but as far as I can tell the government would be within its legal rights to redirect future spending.

            • I think the point is that there has been no investigation, and there has been no trial, so it is unconstitutional for the legislature to pass a law that says “ACORN is prohibited from getting money”, just as it would be unconstitutional for them to pass a law that says “Dick Cheney is prohibited from taking any tax deductions”.

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              p>Often times justice and impartiality appears to fly in the face of “common sense”, but people need to take a step back here and realize that ACORN — the organization — has not been convicted of anything, nor has it even been investigated for corruption in this matter, even though they have been convicted in the court of Fox opinion.

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              p>In fact, nothing about a handful of its employees responding to a very well designed sting operation points to any degree of institutional corruption. At worst, they have hired some people who are not qualified to give advice to the public, and at best, they employ people in extremely impoverished areas of the city who do not pass judgement on or show indignation at the behavior of others, even though such behavior is illegal, because they have seen so much of it.

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              p>This would be like a guy going to a car dealer, looking to buy a car, asking the dealer which car is the fastest, which one performs the best, maybe one that has the largest trunk, because he has an unusual line of work, and then later revealing to the dealer that he is a bookie, and he wants a car that will both intimidate his marks and also one that he can flee from the police in. And then mentioning that he needs a big trunk because he moves a lot of money, and occasionally needs to put a person in there to teach them a lesson.

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              p>If someone did this to several car salespeople and those people did not immediately call the police or show some kind of outrage, would that mean that GM is a corrupt organization? Hardly.

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              p>You do raise a good point though — does Deval Patrick have the power to dictate to state employees that they can’t use Hyatt? Not sure. Some of this may relate to constitutional separation of powers, for example, could the legislature tell the governor specifically who he can or can’t spend money on? Again, not sure.

              • I just think the government ought to be able to funnel it’s money to whatever organizations it sees fit.  I don’t see this as a legal penalty, just a decision by the government on how to spend money.

      • 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.
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        p>http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3571

        SEC. 2. PROHIBITIONS ON FEDERAL FUNDS AND OTHER ACTIVITIES WITH RESPECT TO CERTAIN INDICTED ORGANIZATIONS.

             (a) Prohibitions- With respect to any covered organization, the following prohibitions apply:

                   (1) No Federal contract, grant, cooperative agreement, or any other form of agreement (including a memorandum of understanding) may be awarded to or entered into with the organization.

                   (2) No Federal funds in any other form may be provided to the organization

                   (3) No Federal employee or contractor may promote in any way (including recommending to a person or referring to a person for any purpose) the organization.

             (b) Covered Organization- In this section, the term ‘covered organization’ means any of the following:

                   (1) Any organization that has been indicted for a violation under any Federal or State law governing the financing of a campaign for election for public office or any law governing the administration of an election for public office, including a law relating to voter registration.

                   (2) Any organization that had its State corporate charter terminated due to its failure to comply with Federal or State lobbying disclosure requirements.

                   (3) Any organization that has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency.

                   (4) Any organization that–

                         (A) employs any applicable individual, in a permanent or temporary capacity;CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

                         (B) has under contract or retains any applicable individual;

                         (C) has any applicable individual acting on the organization’s behalf or with the express or apparent authority of the organization.

        • Something positive and constructive.  However are they going to walk this back to ensure that these prohibitions only apply to organizations that help the poor and not to huge corporations in the military-industrial complex?

  4. Census Bureau Drops Acorn

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    Internal Revenue Service announced it is severing its ties with ACORN

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    House voted  345-75 to deny all federal funds for ACORN

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    Senate voted 85-11 to deny funds to ACORN

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    Obama: investigate ACORN

  6. Earlier this week, I wrote about how the Fox-News/Glenn-Beck/Rush-Limbaugh leadership trains its protesting followers to focus the vast bulk of their resentment and anxieties on largely powerless and downtrodden factions, while ignoring, and even revering, the outright pillaging by virtually omnipotent corporate interests that own and control their Government (and, not coincidentally, Fox News).  It’s hard to imagine a more perfectly illustrative example of all of that than the hysterical furor over ACORN.

    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.

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