Acorn Bill

Re:  ACORN Funding Cuts Unconstitutional: Judge, LARRY NEUMEISTER | 03/10/10 08:38 PM |

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)

NEW YORK — A federal judge who found it unconstitutional that Congress tried to cut funding to the activist group ACORN has rejected a government request to change her mind and has ordered government agencies to make it clear the funding isn’t blocked.

In a written ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon made permanent her conclusion last year that the cutoff of funding was unconstitutional. She ordered all federal agencies to put the word out about it.

The Brooklyn judge said ACORN was punished by Congress without the enactment of administrative processes to decide if money had been handled inappropriately. She said the harm to ACORN’s reputation continues because the government never rescinded its advice to withhold funding after it was distributed to “hundreds, if not thousands, of recipients.”

Sometimes the AP has to report on something they’d rather not, like a favorable ruling for ACORN. It seems to tear at their soul to force themselves to put in print something that debunks the right-wing echo chamber. So, this article is no less strained using legal jargon to muddy the waters instead of plain talk describing the ruling, i.e. “the government never rescinded its advice”. No one is sure what that means. To help clarify, the ruling also states that, as reported by The Washington Independent, “… The public will not suffer harm by allowing the plaintiffs to continue work on contracts duly awarded by federal agencies.” In plain English, ACORN can continue to issue grants to the poor and can continue to receive monies from the government during the appeal process that have already been contracted, but no new funds would be awarded until the final adjudication.

As most articles do, this one gives us a brief statement to describe the organization, just to give the readers a reference.

ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, describes itself as an advocate for low-income and minority home buyers and residents.

But the Associated Press has politically wordsmithed the sentence to distance themselves from any claim that ACORN has made about being an advocacy organization for the poor. The AP says that ACORN “describes itself as” an advocate for the poor instead of saying that ACORN “is” an advocate for the poor. It is documented that ACORN has helped the poor in almost every state in the union to either obtain affordable housing or to keep the homes they own. However, the author, Mr. Neumeister, had no qualms describing ACORN as an “activist group” in the opening sentence without explaining that they are an activist group for the poor. This fact is why they are hated by the right. Empowering the poor is not the Reagan plan.

This is from ACORN’s website:

Each ACORN office carries out multiple issue campaigns.  ACORN members across the country work to raise the minimum wage or enact living wage policies; eliminate predatory financial practices by mortgage lenders, payday lenders, and tax preparation companies; win the development of affordable housing and community benefits agreements; improve the quality of and funding for urban public schools; rebuild New Orleans; and pass a federal and state ACORN Working Families Agenda, including paid sick leave for all full time workers.

A recent study shows that our issue campaign victories have delivered approximately $15 billion in direct monetary benefits to our membership and constituency over the past 10 years.

The author of this article uses weasel words to propel the myth that ACORN is guilty of all sorts of nefarious things. Here is the next sentence in the article:

Critics of the group say it has engaged in voter registration fraud and embezzlement and has violated the tax-exempt status of some of its affiliates by engaging in partisan political activities.

“Critics of the group say” is like “experts agree”, or just “some say” – phrases meant to add weight to a statement that has no basis in fact. Katie Couric is famous for using these weasel words to introduce leading questions.

What this really means is that the right-wing, whack jobs and conspiracy freaks have demonized ACORN without justification in order to squash or diminish their capacity to help people move up and out of poverty. The Reagan plan that I mentioned above, and a plan that has been successfully executed for the past 20+ years by both Republicans and Democrats, pertains to the separation of classes in America to the point where the middle class no longer exists and there is only the very rich and very poor. (Re: John Edwards’ Two Americas) The mere existence of ACORN is anathema to Reaganites.

Why was ACORN target by Congress in the first place? The next paragraph has a brief explanation:

Last year, a series of videos filmed at ACORN offices around the country sparked a national scandal and helped drive the organization to near ruin. In one video, ACORN employees were shown apparently advising a couple posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend to lie about her profession and launder her earnings; Brooklyn prosecutors said they did not commit a crime.

First of all, the AP is not telling you that the “series of videos” were filmed by a right-wing Reaganite activist nut-job, James O’Keefe, and his girlfriend, Hannah Giles, in a blatant attempt to smear ACORN and further the efforts by every right-wing on Capitol Hill to kill an organization that advocates for the poor.

The AP failed to tell you that no request for funds was filed by the employees in question on behalf of the prostitute and pimp. In more than one ACORN office where the illegal videos were filmed without the consent of ACORN, the employees called the police and reported O’Keefe’s actions. Other ACORN front offices tossed the frauds out.

The author throws in a quick statement that Brooklyn prosecutors said they, the ACORN employees, weren’t guilty, and lies by omission hiding the facts about O’Keefe and Giles. Here’s the rest of the story:

Brooklyn prosecutors on Monday [March 1, 2010] cleared ACORN of criminal wrongdoing after a four-month probe that began when undercover conservative activists filmed workers giving what appeared to be illegal advice on how to hide money.

While the video by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles seemed to show three ACORN workers advising a prostitute how to hide ill-gotten gains, the unedited version was not as clear, according to a law enforcement source.

“They edited the tape to meet their agenda,” said the source.

“On Sept. 15, 2009, my office began an investigation into possible criminality on the part of three ACORN employees,” Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said in a one-paragraph statement issued Monday afternoon. “That investigation is now concluded and no criminality has been found.”

They should have investigated O’Keefe instead.

Nor did the Associated Press mention the fact that O’Keefe and Giles and some others were arrested in New Orleans, Louisiana for attempting to sabotage the phone lines of Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu. This case is still under investigation. Not a word about this in the article.

There is yet another lie by omission in this article.

In asking the judge to reconsider her December ruling, the government cited a Dec. 7 report written by Scott Harshbarger, former attorney general for Massachusetts. It said the report “reinforces Congress’ purpose in preventing fraud, waste and abuse” by describing ACORN’s long-standing management problems.

The report concluded that ACORN leadership at every level was thin, the government noted.

The judge, however, wrote that it was “unmistakable that Congress determined ACORN’s guilt before defunding it.” She said Congress is entitled to investigate ACORN but cannot “rely on the negative results of a congressional or executive report as a rationale to impose a broad, punitive funding ban on a specific, named organization.”

What the article does not say, and therefore furthers the inference that this ruling is by some activist judge, is that there are already rules and procedures in place for suspending contracts and barring contractors from receiving new ones if crime is suspected. In other words, Congress rammed this legislation through in a heated hate frenzy after viewing some doctored videos for no real reason except to punish ACORN because they do things for the poor.

Mike Dunford, a very knowledgeable blogger, states that, “The ruling says that the judge thinks that it is likely that as the case moves forward, ACORN will succeed in showing that the law is an unconstitutional bill of attainder. It indicates that the judge was not impressed with the government’s argument that Congress was simply trying to protect the public’s money from possible fraud and waste.”

The government’s (DOJ) appeal was based on a report by a former Mass. attorney general that states that the unconstitutional Bill of Attainder, (see Article I of the Constitution which states that there shall be no Bill of Attainder to Ex Post Facto laws) the Defund ACORN Act, would prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. It turns out that the bill was so broadly worded that it would sweep up most of the major defense contractors who commit waste, fraud, and abuse as a matter of day-to-day business. Also, to set matters straight, Judge Gershon did not rule that the Defund ACORN Act was unconstitutional, as AP is reporting, but that ACORN will likely be able to prove that the act is an illegal Bill of Attainder.

From Huffington Post:

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.

In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.

It is reported here that Rep. Alan Grayson, my hero, has done some digging and has a list of companies that might also get defunded by the Defund ACORN Act.

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 Grumman 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.

None of this is mentioned in the article, of course. Doing that might show ACORN in a good light and Congress as ill informed whiners and we can’t have that, can we?

There is one bright spot in the article and it is the last two sentences.

The legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which says it’s dedicated to protecting the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, welcomed Wednesday’s decision.

“The judge’s ruling is a complete rebuke to the right wing’s smear tactics that unfortunately Congress fell for,” legal director Bill Quigley said. “This is why we have a system of checks and balances.”

The problem with throwing this comment in here at the end is that the author wants to leave you with the impression that the loony left is still wearing tinfoil hats and still ranting about the vast right-wing conspiracy when actually this whole mess was sparked by a radical right-wing activist, O’Keefe and his sponsors (FOX), and then fanned into a wildfire by both parties in Congress. And yes, the Democrats railed against ACORN along with the rest of them. After all the support that ACORN gave President Obama during the campaign you’d think that he’d at least speak out about the good job they are doing.

You’d think.

But no, he signed the Defund ACORN Act into law. Makes me want to find a new party. Maybe I’ll go socialist, or something.

___________________________________________________________________