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TechnoratiWho’s the Pimp?
Earlier this month, some of it's employees were caught on tape giving advice to two young right-wing activists posing as pimp and prostitute.
Pfizer is a wealthy and powerful multinational corporation.
Earlier this month, a Pfizer unit pled guilty to a felony in connection with a major health care fraud and paid $2.3 billion in fines.
So, if the Democratically controlled Congress were to vote to either:
a) strip federal funding from the grassroots group Acorn, or
b) ban corporate felon Pfizer from future government business
Which would it be?
Let me guess.
Last week, the Democratic controlled Congress voted to strip Acorn of its federal funding.
Why?
The vote came a day after the release of the latest video by the two activists who crisscrossed the country trying to get Acorn employees to help them in setting up a child-prostitution business.
In some Acorn offices, workers reported the two to the police.
In others, they sought to help the fake pimp and prostitute.
Fox and Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck and O'Reilly made it seem as if Acorn was a corporate felon.
And reacting to the right-wing echo chamber, the House and Senate voted to end Acorn's federal funding.
Unclear whether such a move is Constitutional.
The Constitution prohibits bills of attainder.
That means Congress can't punish individual organizations.
But putting that minor detail aside for a moment, let's say Congress can punish.
Why bully the weak?
After all, a society rots from the head down.
Let's chop at the top.
Let's find a list of major corporate criminals who rip off the federal government.
And bar them from ever doing business with the federal government again.
Lo and behold, we have such a list right here.
A quick and dirty list from the annals of Taxpayers Against Fraud and the Corporate Crime Reporter:
Pfizer, Serono, Takeda-Abbott Pharmaceutical, Shering-Plough, Lilly, Abbott Labs, Cephalon, National Medical Enterprises, HCA, Gambro Health Care, Schering-Plough, Astra-Zeneca, Bayer, Purdue.
Major corporate criminals?
Check.
Convicted in a court of law?
Check.
Ripped off the federal government?
Check.
Paid fines that would keep Acorn in business until hell freezes over?
Check.
Which raises an obvious question for the members of Congress who voted overwhelmingly to strip Acorn of its federal funding:
Who's the pimp?
20 Comments so far
Show AllWhy are those in power usually not able to be logical?
Why can't those in power understand the concept that the more ACTUAL damage someone does, the harsher the prison term?
If the majority of those in Congress and The Executive Branch were logical they would see to it that the corporations mentioned in the above article were prosecuted HARSHLY.
Add to this, corporations such as Haliburton and Blackwater, The main men in The Bush Administration, etc.
(Much, much, MUCH more harshly than any punitive action against ACORN)
I do not agree with what the ACORN workers shown in the video did ... and wonder ... if the video footage used in the report were from sites where the workers knew it was a set up ... but were not experienced enough to just shut up and order them out.
However, the video highlights one truth ...YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.
This 'poor pimp' could only afford the free Taxation Dept at ACORN.
We all know that the prestigious law firms stacked chin to jowl inside the Beltway could have provided the same basic info wrapped to look soooooo much more valuable and costing a whole lot of money. But - the money would pay for the assurance that this 'pimp' would never have any tax problems.
This wealthy pimp of course is a person aka a Corporation.
@ mnd September 23rd, 2009 7:30 pm, you have some good points here; yes, indeed, if he had gone to a corporate tax attorney, he would have had to pay a small fortune, and the advice probably wouldn't have been any better, although, of course, high-priced lawyers usually double as high-priced fixers.
I'm still waiting for the videos O'Keefe made at the 24 ACORN offices where he WAS turned away, and for the Big Media to make more of the police report that was filed by at least one office.
Although O'Keefe claims he's not a 'conservative' but a 'progressive radical,' his history tells a different story. He has done 'hidden camera' stunts like this before, including one at Planned Parenthood where he tagged along with a woman in her 20s pretending to be a 15-year-old girl seeking an abortion.
A woman who had known him in college was helping edit the Planned Parenthood footage and pointed out to O'Keefe that he was intentionally editing it to make the organization look bad. O'Keefe apparently didn't care, and his college friend quit. Leads me to wonder what he edited out of the videos that got those four women fired from ACORN?
We're fortunate to have ACORN workers who can help poor people with their taxes. Any volunteer organization that can turn slave trafficking pedophiles into a home based business with legitimate tax write-offs is pretty impressive. Why isn't the corporate media focusing on how creative the poor have to be just to survive?
The right wingers, from the Demok congress chimps, to the foot soldiers who stung ACORN, all share a value system that places corporations at the mighty top and people at the miserable bottom. This is why they stung ACORN.
How exactly can people value corporations more than they value people? Human nature has a capacity to come unhinged. i.e. a person is capable of defying one's personhood, and identifying one's self instead as a cog in a corporate machine or something even larger, such as a nationalist, religious, or racist movement to dominate the planet.
San Francisco's 9th district had an opportunity this past election season to walk the walk and vote the Pelosi cog out of the machine and elect Sheehan but they and their peers failed and so the congress chimps have their renewed licenses to pursue business as usual, support these monster corporations that they perceive as providing them special privileges nationally and globally, without which they would have to accept the status of ordinary people in an ordinary society.
Why can't they accept "ordinary"? Because they were instructed by the propaganda to regard nature as the enemy to be defeated/dominated. Thus they cannot appreciate their own humanity, their own selves, ordinary yet magnificent products of nature. It's the clearest symptom of a serious illness that's been institutionalized in the "good ol USA".
Obama,dems,repug's "doing it" to the people and "doing" for the cesspool of health insurance and so they are covered with shit and have no desire to have the situation any other way and heaven forbid any one propose to clean it up.Hence, "picking on ACORN is easy and safe.The "pimp" reference is hilarious and loved it!Tony
I think the question is 'who's the prostitute' but who's counting?
Another story, but same questions...the hundreds of thousands of insurance company employees who would be out of work if the public option were initiated versus the hundreds of thousands who are already unemployed and/or are facing unemployment, plus the number of people forced through foreclosure to leave their homes...which group is higher and which group will be 'graced' by this administration? For every new unemployed person who may have lost his or her job as the direct result of higher and higher insurance premiums there is a desk jockey somewhere reveling in a increased bonus and a government hack reveling in planning a new campaign stradegy with the infused campaign coffers...Too Big to Fail
RM forgot the top two major corporate criminals who have not only ripped off our government for hundreds of billions, but which also are directly responsible for the deaths of dozens of US soldiers and scores of innocents:
Halliburton and Blackwater.
Both of whom were, of course, recently rewarded with hundreds of millions more worth of 'contracts.'
And BTW, the problem with ACORN is, according to a 'guy on the street' interview on The News Hour the other night, is that ACORN is an Obama front organization he is using to build his secret anti-conservative, anti-Christian Citizens Army...
Swear, that's what the R-nut said...
This ACORN story means absolutely nothing to anyone. It is not important in the grand scheme of things. It is simply entertainment to fuel bigoted minds and fill up Faux News airtime with hateful drivel.
Acorn helps poor people. That is why the Right and the corporatist Democrats hate Acorn. They have received something like $53 million in federal funds over the last 15 yrs about $3 million per year. They had 5 of 700 employeees behave badly and those employees were promptly dealt with.
Contrast that with Blackwater who has rec'd $174 million in security contracts in Iraq alone since Obama took office. They have pending charges against them for tax evasion, arms smuggling, murder and are involved in child prostitution in there green zone compound. CEO Erik Prince was aware of this and has done nothing about it.
Where is the outrage? Where is the Congessional grandstanding over Blackwater and the defunding of Blackwater? Where is the condemnation from Obama?
Riiight, Obama is the real problem. No matter what the issue is, find a way to make it Obama's fault.
It is Obama's fault...and Bush's fault...and Congress...and the lobbyists...and the corporations...and the media. Essential our system is broken and sorry Obama fans, he is a part of that broken system.
I want him to do well. I want him to have a backbone, but he doesn't. Why doesn't he defend Acorn or Van Jones, or Rev Wright, or single payer, or the anti-war movement. He only defends the corporations and the status quo. So yeah, it is Obama's fault. He is in a position to change this broken system, but he doesn't.
Re AKmauler September 22nd, 2009 1:51 pm
Excellent observations. This most recent example of manufactured outrage is consistent with the general principle that welfare for corporations is just good public policy, while "the general welfare" is a commie/fascist/socialist plot.
"a) strip federal funding from the grassroots group Acorn, or
b) ban corporate felon Pfizer from future government business"
It should be both a) and b). Phizer recently acquired another large company with borrowed money. Only Kucinich in Congress noted that the banks were not lending to people and small business but had billions of taxpayer money for Phizer. The entire financial system is driven by corrupt regulation. Let the silly Acorn go and focus on the important issues. Otherwise you become a tool of the big criminals. That's what they want us to do, take the wrong side on little issues and demolish our credibility.
Republicans are criminals---check
Democrats are criminals---check
People that believe in either are being duped---check
What a great article.
If we had a main stream media that had a backbone and weren't shills for the corporations, a question like this would be asked on the national news reports. But that would require them to question the companies that advertise with them, and keep them in the lifestyles that they have become accustomed to. It just goes to show that corporate money corrupts everything it comes it contact with.
I wonder what infuriates the right wing more about Acorn, that they register voters that will more likely vote for democrats, or that they help the poor. You would think that a party that has a "Christian" base would be trying to support groups that helped the poor, like the God they supposed worship said they should.
"like the God they supposed worship said they should"
"God" is nothing more, nothing less, than a tool, like a hammer or screwdriver. They don't really worship it.
More than a hundred years ago, Ambrose Bierce had America pegged when he wrote in The Devil's Dictionary:
"Mammon, n.: The god of the world's leading religion."
And "Christian businessman" continues to be as much of an oxymoron as "compassionate conservative," "people-friendly corporations" or "free-market capitalism."
More than fifty years ago, the late, great Oscar Levant nailed down the basic distinguishing feature between the Republicans and Democrats:
"The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too."
That said, this latest dust-up over ACORN is like watching a video of a Monty Python skit. I was wincing with disgust while laughing as I watched geeky white boy James O'Keefe, dressed for all the world like Sonny Bono when he had Cher, babe, trying to pass himself off as Mr. Bad Ass Pimp to a collection of black women from the 'Hood who had doubtless seen the real thing at sometime in their lives – it was like casting Wally Cox as The Godfather. "Gosh, Michael, you're just doin' a swell job of runnin' the family!"
His fake-hooker companion Hannah Giles didn’t play her role much better – she was dumb enough, but a little too clean and track free – but her's wasn't the important role.
The college-educated ofay voice of O'Keefe, in the same tone as a census-taker, earnestly asking for help to avoid paying his pimp taxes and lessons in running a brothel with underage girls rightfully had the ACORN women stifling grins. This was a spectacle that only a teabagger could swallow whole without gagging on the sheer absurdity.
Well, a teabagger, our vacuous illiberal media and the growing crop of space cadets in our Congress.
It's expected that the GOP would indulge in their usual over-popped level of fake moral outrage – they paid for the video, after all -- and the pundits live off their crumbs, but couldn't we have had at least one Democrat call 'bullshit' on this silly nonsense? No one but a rural halfwit would believe this kid is a pimp, and anybody who's been around a city block once knows it.
The Republican Party's true base of wealthy sludges, corporate executives and over-paid lobbyists have long had a bitter grudge against ACORN, because the community service group registers voters and helps poor people. To put it simply, the GOP hates the poor, even as they work diligently to produce more of them to reward their corporate backers with a large pool of ever-cheaper labor. It's shameful that not even one prominent Democrat who gets national TV time had the gonads to call out this ludicrous video for what it was -- a comedy routine badly performed by amateurs.
The Big Media also didn't call out O'Keefe for lying -- he said he only visited those four offices; in fact, he visited two dozen ACORN offices around the country where ACORN staff turned him away and a few even called the police on him. (The police reports exist proving this fact.) So when is O'Keefe held over the fire for blatantly lying and when do we see the video footage of 'Mr. Pimp' O'Keefe being shown the door?
Join me in ignoring anything to do with the media. It is not the right wing which defunded ACORN it was the dmeocratic party controlled congress which did so. Proving that the dem controlled congress hates the poor.
Not to worry though, soon enough all the wealth will be concentrated and distinctions over what constitutes poor will be moot.