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The Distracting Benefits of ACORN Hysteria
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 $3.1 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. Just this week, The Post detailed how the government and Wall St. are now so intertwined that banking executives are spending vast resources to increase their presence in Washington:
So, too, for [BlackRock Chairman Laurence] Fink, who said much hinges on his relationship with Washington. He often has talked to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and his predecessor, Henry M. Paulson Jr. Fink was among the first regulators reached out to when they needed urgent advice on pricing exotic securities or predicting the global fallout from the failure of large financial firms like Lehman Brothers.
"We are going to be spending more time inside the Beltway, either by helping the government or, if we are asked, shaping policy and decisions," Fink said. "It is beholden on us on behalf of our clients to have input in Washington" . . .
Some firms are bringing Washingtonians to them.
A year ago, James B. Lockhart III was the top federal regulator overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when the Bush administration seized the two mortgage finance companies, saving the home loan market from collapse. When Lockhart said last month that he would step down from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, he was snapped up quickly. Today he is vice chairman of WL Ross, which is looking to make money by buying mortgage assets and loans cast off by lenders as unprofitable.
Other former federal officials are scrambling for a piece of the action. Joseph J. Murin, former president of Ginnie Mae, which guarantees securities linked to government-backed mortgages, and former Federal Housing Administration commissioner Brian Montgomery, set up a consulting shop on L Street in mid-August.
As previously documented, Goldman Sachs itself has a virtual lock on the top Treasury positions no matter which party is in power. The vaunted bipartisan "Baucus plan" was literally written by a Baucus aide who just left her position as Vice President of Wellpoint to write the health care reform plan for the Senate -- a revelation which barely caused a ripple. And the Supreme Court is on the verge of striking down the few limits on corporate involvement in our politics, a ruling which may (or may not be) constitutionally defensible but which will flood American politics with so much corporate money that it will give new meaning to the term "oligarchy."
So with this massive pillaging of America's economic security and its control of American government by its richest and most powerful factions growing by the day, to whom is America's intense economic anxiety being directed? To a non-profit group that devotes itself to providing minute benefits to people who live under America's poverty line, and which is so powerless in Washington that virtually the entire U.S. Senate just voted to cut off its funding at the first sign of real controversy -- could anyone imagine that happening to a key player in the banking or defense industry?
Apparently, the problem for middle-class and lower-middle-class Americans is not that their taxpayer dollars are going to prop up billionaires, oligarchs and their corrupt industries. It's that America's impoverished -- a group that is growing rapidly -- is getting too much, has too much power and too little accountability. Anonymous Liberal has a superb post on the manipulative inanity of the Fox-generated ACORN "scandal" (h/t D-day):
Let's take a step back and consider just what ACORN is. It is a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower and improve the lives of poor people. As with many other organizations, ACORN has a number of legally distinct parts, each of which has different sources of funding and engages in different kinds of activities (ACORN's conservative enemies routinely conflate these various parts to imply that ACORN is using federal money for improper political purposes). Since its founding the 70s, ACORN and its employees and volunteers have fought successfully to, among other things, increase minimum wages across the country, increase the quality of public education in poor areas, and protect people from predatory lending practices. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, ACORN helped rebuild thousands of homes and assisted victims in relocating and finding housing outside of New Orleans. The ACORN activity that has drawn the most conservative ire is its voter registration efforts which, consistent with ACORN's mission, are primarily aimed at low-income voters (who tend to vote Democratic). . . .
But even if you take these film-makers at face value and assume the worst, the reality is that ACORN has thousands of employees and the vast majority of them spend their days trying to help poor people through perfectly legal means (and receive very little compensation for doing so). Even before yesterday's Senate vote, the amount of federal money that went to ACORN was very small. This is a relatively insignificant organization in the grand scheme of things, but it's an organization that has unquestionably fought over the years to improve the lives of the less fortunate in this country.
That the GOP and its conservative supporters would single out this particular organization for such intense demonization is telling. In September of last year, the entire world came perilously close to complete financial catastrophe. We're still not out of the woods and we're deep within one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. This situation was brought about by the recklessness and greed of our banks and financial institutions, most of which had to be bailed out at enormous cost to the American taxpayer (exponentially more than all of the tax dollars given to ACORN over the years). The people who brought about this near catastrophe, for the most, profited immensely from it. These very same institutions, propped up by the American taxpayer, are once again raking in large profits.
But rather than focus their anger on these folks, conservatives choose to go after an organization composed almost entirely of low-paid community organizers, an organization that could never hope to have even a small fraction of the clout or the ability to affect the overall direction of the country that Wall Street bankers have. ACORN's relative lack of political influence was on full display yesterday, when the U.S. Senate (in which Democrats have a supermajority) not only entertained a vote to defund ACORN, but approved it by a huge margin (with only seven Democrats opposing).
If one were to watch Fox News or listen to Rush Limbaugh -- as millions do -- one would believe that the burden of the ordinary American taxpayer, and the unfair plight of America's rich, is that their money is being stolen by the poorest and most powerless sectors of the society. An organization whose constituencies are often-unregistered inner-city minorities, the homeless and the dispossesed is depicted as though it's Goldman Sachs, Blackwater, Haillburton and combined, as though Washington officials are in thrall to those living in poverty rather than those who fund their campaigns. It's not the nice men in the suits doing the stealing but the very people, often minorities or illegal immigrants, with no political or financial power who nonetheless somehow dominate the government and get everything for themselves. The poorer and weaker one is, the more one is demonized in right-wing mythology as all-powerful receipients of ill-gotten gains; conversely, the stronger and more powerful one is, the more one is depicted as an oppressed and put-upon victim (that same dynamic applies to foreign affairs as well).
It's such an obvious falsehood -- so counter-intuitive and irrational -- yet it resonates due to powerful cultural manipulations. Most of all, what's so pernicious about all of this is that the same interests who are stealing, pillaging and wallowing in corruption are scapegoating the poorest and most vulnerable in order to ensure that the victims of their behavior are furious with everyone except for them.
UPDATE: John Cole highlights what might be the most telling aspect of all of this: demands for a "Special Prosecutor" into Obama's so-called "relationship with ACORN" from the very same circles that vehemently objected to investigations into torture, illegal government spying, politicized prosecutions, military contractor theft, Lewis Libby's obstruction of justice, and virtually every other instance of Bush-era acts of criminality. Those, of course, are the very same people who, before that, demanded endless inquiries into Whitewater and Vince Foster's murder.
44 Comments so far
Show AllIt would be great if Glenn Greenwald's articles would be read in the mainstream, or if his voice were on the radio and the dittoes could hear.
How about if we all just bite the bullet and "forward" this article, and all the GOOD Glenn's articles we get, to all the wingnuts in our circle who surround us.
And then, stand up for him in letters to the editor of our local papers when he becomes the next target to be demonized. Really, all of us are being demonized.
Simply one of the best journalists in America!!!
Agreed. Spells out the hypocrisies of our policies so clearly you wonder how ANYONE can miss them.
That would be a lot of forwarding. Glenn Greenwald is a wonderful journalist. I would not focus on wingnuts but on decent friends who could use better information.
Joe
The corporatists believe it is imperative to crush ACORN now as they worry that as the ranks of the unemployed and the impoverished swell in the coming years the poor could become a powerful voting bloc, possibly even voting against corporatist interests! So it is necessary to nip that in the bud and do all they can to prevent the poor from ever voting in large numbers.
kivals: "So it is necessary to nip that in the bud and do all they can to prevent the poor from ever voting in large numbers." Thanks for re-inforcing Greenwald's important point about the method behind the madness of ACORN-phobia. A Marxist dialectician might say that capitalism is creating the "seeds of its own destruction" by creating an ever larger and more miserable proletariat. Marx foresaw a period of "false consciousness" in which the proletariat would fail to recognize its own victimization, and this seems exactly the agenda of the rear-guard of ACORN-baiters: to keep "the poor" in that pre-revolutionary state of consciousness. And it also articulates the appropriate electoral strategy for those opposed to the corporatocracy: it's THE POOR, stupid, the people who ordinarily don't vote and ordinarily don't have any hopeful contacts with agencies like ACORN. I've far from given up on an electoral approach to social reform, but we who are "bourgeois intellectuals" are going to have to find our way to the other side of the tracks at every election for offices and referendums.
"A Marxist dialectician might say that capitalism is creating the 'seeds of its own destruction' by creating an ever larger and more miserable proletariat."
I sometimes think that the elite corporatists have convinced themselves that through advances in technology regarding propaganda development and dissemination, electronic eavesdropping and other forms of high tech spying, crowd control, military weaponry, and even robotics, drones, and Artificial Intelligence that they have insulated themselves from any dire consequences from impoverishing the majority of the population. And I sometimes worry that they may be right.
But I think you are correct that we should not give up hope on the electoral process as long as there is any possibility that it can be used as an effective tool.
Regarding "the poor" and electoral strategy. Was it just Republican-dominated Florida, but wasn't there at the 04 election voting registration legislation that forbade ACORN from conducting voter registration drives? If that's an across-the-board strategy of the corporatocracy, will it have to be carried out by those individuals and agencies not covered by any such prohibitions?
I am not aware of any federal legislation like that in 2004 or any other time. If ACORN is prohibited from doing such registration drives, it certainly would be helpful for some alternative organization to fill the void.
ACORN nor anyone else should be prevented from registrastion drives unless they were proven guilty of something. Accusations are just that, accusations.
When anyone like Acorn is demonized for a few errors by the rabid right, it is a racist, witch hunt pure and simple. It looks to me that it is like the red scare of the 1950's.Excellent article, Mr. Greenwald!
Acorn has become a scape goat for the far right/loony right gang, as they see they must adopt Tom Dewey's old strategy of 1944 and 1948, "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em."
But "Truth crushed to earth," as William Cullen Bryant once said "will rise again." We "shall know the truth, it shall set us free'-- free of the lying phony neo con politicians and the parasites on the working and middle class in the USA.
AD
"Acorn has become a scape goat for the far right/loony right gang."
According to the article only 7 Dems voted against the de-funding. Which puts the majority of Dems firmly in the "far right/loony right gang".
And that's a revelation because...?
...because the Dems are rarely portrayed as part of the "far right". In the mainstream they are portrayed as the left, and in the indy media they are portrayed as center-right.
An interesting article I just read about the right wing obsession with the "undeserving poor" as expressed through the philosophy of Ayn Rand:
http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/wealthcare-0
This paradox would be an excellent subject for a Michael Moore documentary. Show angry marchers denouncing ACORN, but NO marches following the ENRON, Savings & Loan, and current Wall Street scandals.
Love him or hate him, nothing gets people talking like a Michael Moore film.
Another good film for the leftie film-goer is Andrew & Leslie Cockburn's "American Casino".
ACORN encourages people to cheat on their taxes. I thought the left wanted people to pay taxes?
Where is your proof? How about the Arthur Andersen accounting firm and Enron? Don't moan about ACORN when you turds on the right seem to ignore and actively cheer on the crimes of your heroes. If ACORN broke the law, then they should face the consequences just like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. Your selective application of outrage is pathetic. Go trolling elsewhere.
"The poorer and weaker one is, the more one is demonized in right-wing mythology as all-powerful recipients of ill-gotten gains; conversely, the stronger and more powerful one is, the more one is depicted as an oppressed and put-upon victim."
They've done it - they've finally discovered the secret code that, when pondered, triggers total brain-lock.
(Not that we haven't heard it before: "It's not my fault I beat and raped her - look at what she was wearing! She was asking for it!")
exactly.
Right on the money, Glenn (pun intended). The hypocrisy, greed, and callous disregard for democracy and fairness on the part of the right wing fascists is simply appalling and apparently knows no bounds. I don't want my middle-class taxes supporting these bastards. What's the solution to this? Time to consider moving to another country(?).
And, yes, how could we fail to note that phony ACORN-like
controversies seem available on the shelves of the right
wing for constant cover of their criminal activities.
Even further, the GOP/"pro-life" murderers, GOP/NRA gun nuts,
GOP/fascist rallies which now include health care thuggery
fill in when something less than murder is required --
however, as many understand this right wing love of creating
aggressive hatred, it can lead to the kind of violence which
brings death to political leaders. Nancy Pelosi today also
rightfully connected this highly charged rhetoric to the
creation of an atmosphere of hatred in San Francisco in the
1970's which led to the deaths of Harvey Milk and Mayor
Musconi.
Right wing propaganda works -- but not for democracy
******************************************************
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
The trigger was a couple that went to an ACORN office as a pimp and his hooker and asked for help setting up a brothel.
They video taped ACORN members assisting them and giving them information on who to contact. (Videoing this was illegal!)
These people are appearing on FOX news, who are running with the story.
It's our spineless Congress, intimidated by the right wing that we need to replace.
Great comparison, Wall St. socialism vs. community activists for the poor. "TOO SMALL TO MATTER"
This is shameful!
There is nothing illegal about videotaping, PETA does it all the time.
It's a local law.
Am I the only one who's weary of all this viewing-with-alarm and High Dudgeon? "Oh, aren't they just terrible! They lied again! Isn't it awful! How shameful of them! Quick, the smelling salts!"
For people who are just plain *slow* off the mark, like me, I can understand getting upset the first hundred or two hundred or even three thousand times we see liars lying. But isn't there some kind of natural upper bound, where we just get tired of doing a dozen declamatory laps on our high horses and instead let them stay in the stable while we start thinking about doing something *useful* instead?
Liars lie. That's a defining characteristic. Is there any limit to our capacity for Being Shocked by it? Or is empty drama all we're good for?
I'd really like to know.
Several years ago the columnist Paul Craig Roberts described a trip to China which had him meeting with various Party functionaries. Apart from the official function, his hosts were eager to quiz him about a recently published poll which showed that about 50% of the American people still believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11. How, they were curious to know, in a country with a free press and open exchange of information, could a population believe such falsehoods in such high numbers? What was the secret to a thought control system that seemed so much more effective than their coercive measures?
"What was the secret to a thought control system that seemed so much more effective than their coercive measures?"
The secret is the appearance of "fair and balanced" reporting, the infiltration and subversion of "liberal" and even "progressive" media by powerful interests, and the diversion of activism onto topics that do not threaten the status quo (e.g. God/Guns/Gays/Blacks/......). Also, whereas in China everybody knows the media is controlled by the government and so people are reflexively wary of all news disseminated, in the US the private ownership of the mass media by a number (albeit relative handful) of private entities gives the appearance of a free, open and independent media. Americans know (and are encouraged) to distrust government, and to trust business more, and they do NOT make the connection between the news and the businesses that disemminate the news.
The defunding of ACORN by Congress (not just the Senate, but also the House, and by large bipartisan majorities) is such a shame. I applaud those who showed some guts and voted against the travesty of the resolutions in both houses. They were not willing to throw under the bus a small organization made up of people who do noble work.
Another example of Dem complicity in the Right's attempt to remove what little influence progressive grass roots groups have.
I believe there have been enough questions raised about ACORN to justify an investigation by the Attorney Generals office.
And I suggest he start it right after he finishes with Haliburton, KBR, Black Water, Goldman Sachs, the actions at Guantanamo, Dick Cheney and a number of others that can be added.
Nice, my head almost exploded after I read your first sentence! Geeeez! where is my blood pressue medication?
The point is to come to ACORN's defense. Contribute, join, participate. They represent the poor, and there are more and more poor, so they are one of the few hopes.
I mean, how low can you go? a "sting" operation to snair an ngo that serves the poor? OMG!
Who wants to bet that Obama won't reassign the justice dept people who are looking into whether some low level sadists used more water on torture victims than was allowed by the justice dept instruction manual...and send them after this vile bunch of minority lovers?
Greenwald's essays today and Tuesday provide excellent analyses on how a worthy organization such as ACORN is vulnerable to scapegoating by virtue of its aim to help the "other" --ie. the poor--in today's society.
You could make a similar and no less powerfull argument in the case of the "public option"--except the "public option" is far from worthy.
That is, the premise of the public option puts the focus on benefiting "someone else," and as Greenwald writes:
"Just as was true for the 1994 crime bill, the right-wing fury over health care reform is motivated by the fear that middle-class Americans will have their money taken away by Obama while -- all together now, euphemistically -- "having someone else benefit."
That's one of the ways the strategy--not just the substance--of singlepayer is superior to the public option. Singlpayer benefits everyone--everybody in, nobody out.
As Vicente Navarro writes in "Obama's Mistakes in Healthcare Reform":
"Obama plans to cover the uninsured by increasing taxes on the rich (a very popular measure, as shown in all polls) and by transferring funds saved through increased efficiencies in existing programs, including Medicare (an unpopular measure, for the reasons I’ve mentioned). We see here the same problems we’ve seen with other programs targeted to specific, small sectors of the population, such as the poor. Programs that are not universal (i.e., do not benefit everyone) are intrinsically unpopular. This is why antipoverty programs are unpopular. People feel that they are paying, through taxation, for programs that do not benefit them. Compassion is not, and never has been, a successful motivation for public policy. Solidarity is. You support others with the understanding that they will support you when you need it most. The long history of social policy, in the U.S. and elsewhere, shows that universality is a better way to get popular support for a program than means-testing for programs targeted to specific vulnerable groups."
These days, with the unchecked power and influence of the "free" market--not to mention its ever expanding and deepening destructive ethos of self-interest--we're all vulnerable to losing our freedom. As Paul Craig Roberts writes in "The Health Care Deceit":
"The current health care “debate” shows how far gone representative government is in the United States. Members of Congress represent the powerful interest groups that fill their campaign coffers, not the people who vote for them."
"Debate focuses on subsidiary issues, because Congress no longer writes the bills it passes."
Our own history teaches that when our freedom and rights are jeopardized by those in power, people can come together to protect their own rights by supporting the rights of others. That's at the heart of democracy--and singlepayer too.
The contrasts Greenwald exposes certainly say a lot things. But isn't one of them that organizations like ACORN accept federal funds at their peril? I didn't even know they received federal money until this "scandal" hit.
Anyone can be entrapped by journalists dangling temptations in front of hidden cameras. I remain convinced that ACORN has done and will continue doing worthy projects, perhaps even more effectively with private rather than public money. I can't imagine the ACLU, for example, getting federal funds, and yet that organization regularly lands knockout punches on behalf of truth and justice (yes, I'm a member).
As for federal assistance to corrupt banks, insurance companies, etc. that the conservatives never attack as they have attacked ACORN, any public money should have regulatory strings attached. And if Greenwald could pull off something like the Fox sting in the sanctums of these "behemoths," I'm sure it would gain a lot of attention. In fact, that's something like what Michael Moore does, isn't it?
I always go back to the same basic analysis with anything that has to do with Right Wing whackjobs hysteria: consider the source! These are mature adults who, in the year 2009, still play with imaginary friends. They hear of a plane crash where 500 people got killed but one drunken 98-year old man survived and it was a miracle, it was the hand of god, god saved him, god is good, good is merciful, god is grand. Oh, yeah, he fucked the other 499 but he saved the 98-year old drunk who, as soon as he walked out of the hospital, died of old age but hallelujah! And that kind of shit actually makes sense to them! Now, why would anyone expect them to be able to concentrate on the imporant (and really scary) stuff like the robbery and pillage of the country when they can zero on a lie, hone on it like there's no tomorrow and make themselves feel better and self-righteous for it.
The only solution for these folks is mass labotomies.
The successes of the FOX News misinformation campaigns, such as the illegal sting against ACORN, in their quest for manipulating public opinion, underscores a clear and present danger to our system. Most of the news media must share blame due to their complacency.
Even though some low paid ACORN employees may have acted improperly, their trhangressions are trivial compared to the trillions swindled by the money manipulators, who were treated relatively kindly by FOX News. Never did they critique the Bush administration for ther dreadful wars on science.
The motives of FOX News are clear.
If the members of ACORN did nothing wrong, then why were they fired? Apparently the leadership at ACORN thought that was misconduct of their members.
Not the point. The alleged misconduct of a few members is reason enough to cut off ACORN's funding, but the billions of dollars that were misused (to put it as mildly as possible) by the Pentagon and private contractors leads to ... more money and more contracts for those very same organizations.
And they to should be held accountable.
Excuse my ignorance here, but what exactly is the right's beef with ACORN? I know that during the election they had some fake voter registration forms which ACORN found and flagged itself, but still had to submit them to registration officials for legal reasons. I try to avoid right wing media as much as possible, so I am unaware of any new "outrages" in the last few months.
Maybe these nuts would know an ACORN when they saw one. Sorry, I couldn't resist at least one bad pun!
I don't know if they have a good beef to gripe about.
Mainly they are poor people getting a little fed assistance, so it's easy to get the money worshipers to feel ALL of THEM poor folks are robbing the rich. They fall for it all the time, no rime or reason to it.