Over the past few weeks, videotapes have been trickling out that purport to show ACORN employees offered tax advice to those seeking to engage in child prostitution or other salacious activities. Having viewed the tapes, it’s obvious that they have been edited extensively, and that alone should make one wonder what the original tapes may show. Further, Media Matters has a lengthy critique of the credibility [1] of the conservative activists and the manufactured news story that they have created, including failing to report that in at least one instance police were called and the filmmakers were removed from the premises after inquiring about underage prostitution. But really, whether ACORN employees did or did not do everything they are accused of is a side issue.
The Huffington Post yesterday [2] pointed out that the legislative zeal to cut off funding for ACORN may have created an even bigger problem: it may eliminate the entire military-industrial complex. You see, the legislation [3] prohibits federal funding or promotion of organizations that, among other things, “has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency”. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) maintains a database [4] of companies holding federal contracts that also have “histories of misconduct such as fraud” that would ostensibly bar them from receiving any further governmental funding under the “Defund ACORN Act”. Top violators include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grummond, Raytheon, KBR (former Halliburton subsidiary)…. and a staggering number of other large corporations doing business with the federal government. House Republican leader John Boehner released a statement [5] congratulating house Republicans for all they “have done to hold ACORN accountable for its abuse of taxpayer dollars and the public trust.” One wonders whether he will hold these other corporations to the same standard that they require of ACORN? After all, the scale of the violations by the weapons industry dwarfs anything ACORN is accused of. For fiscal year 2007 [4], Lockheed Martin had federal contracts valued at $34.2 billion (with a b) dollars, and the cost of their misconduct since 1995 is valued at $577.2 million. ACORN has only received $53 million in federal funds since 1994 [6], and none of the allegations show any actual harm [1] was done to the government. In other words, Lockeed Martin has actually committed fraud to the tune of over 10 times the total amount of federal funding ACORN has received. UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald wrote about this today also, and he quotes [7] Rep. Alan Grayson (D.-FL) “The amount of money that ACORN has received in the past 20 years altogether is roughly equal to what the taxpayer paid to Haillburton [sic] each day during the war in Iraq.”
As a society, are willing to overlook the most egregious examples of fraud and corruption, but these minor cases somehow draw all the scrutiny. Consider these headlines over the past year or so:
- IRS extends amnesty program for tax cheats [8]. Focused on those with overseas bank accounts, which I’m pretty sure are relatively rare among the middle and lower classes.
- 13 Firms that received bailout money owe back taxes [9]. Total owed? Over $220 million.
- IRS Audits of large companies decline for 3rd year in a row. [10]
- Rich cheat more on taxes, new study shows [11]. “… because of their higher noncompliance rates, those with true incomes of $200,000 or more received 25% of all income, but accounted for 40% of net underreported income and 42% of underreported tax in 2001″
- Study shows most corporations pay no U.S. income taxes [12]. No commentary needed.
- Taxing Grandma to subsidize Goldman Sachs [13]. “The contrast between how the banks and car companies are treated is the product of political acumen, not financial skills, at Goldman Sachs and other banks. Having fed the campaign machines of both political parties and lavished speaking fees on future White House economic advisors, these financial wizards have managed to purchase preferred treatment in our capital.When times are good, their troops feast like a conquering Roman army. When they fail, Washington gives them welfare on the gold plates of emperors.”
- Crimes suspected in 20 bailout cases– for starters [14]. “the total fraud could ultimately reach into the tens of billions of dollars”
- Tax court rejects taxpayer’s attempt to use Geithner’s TurboTax defense [15]. If it’s good enough for the prospective Treasury Secretary, why not for a regular Joe?
- U.S. Economy: worker productivity surges and labor costs drop [16]. It’s extremely profitable to exploit workers for increased productivity while they are just trying to keep their jobs.
- The widening gap in America’s two-tiered society [17]. “…one wonders when a significant number of Americans will, finally, recognize that they’ve been had. Put another way by Andrew Greeley: “It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us. Perhaps the reason is that rich men are very clever at covering up what they do.”This explanation in mind, we need not worry as much about the terrorists from abroad as the terrorists from above and the duped voters who repeatedly fall for political candidates pandering to this broadly malignant upper class. The latter bunch and their sycophantic legislative admirers, more than any foreign guerrillas, are leading the world’s wealthiest nation into ever deeper ruin.”
[18]Do you understand the common thread among all these articles? The rich are getting further ahead, largely because they play by a different set of rules. Conservatives that are so incensed with ACORN need to wake up and realize that they have far more in common with the “socialist” left than they have with the capitalist overlords of our system. The elite selectively apply the laws, and the right and left bicker over the details. All this manufactured ACORN controversy does is distract us from the things that really matter to 99% of Americans: jobs, housing, healthcare. I’m not saying don’t be upset at ACORN if there was, in fact, wrongdoing. All I ask is that we apply the same standards to the wealthy. Because while an ACORN employee may have been advising someone how to get a tax break on a brothel, the real criminals have been hiding their taxes out of the country, exploiting their political connections, committing actual fraud, and getting richer all the time. Perhaps Matt Taibbi put it best [19]:
After all, the reason the winger crowd can’t find a way to be coherently angry right now is because this country has no healthy avenues for genuine populist outrage. It never has. The setup always goes the other way: when the excesses of business interests and their political proteges in Washington leave the regular guy broke and screwed, the response is always for the lower and middle classes to split down the middle and find reasons to get pissed off not at their greedy bosses but at each other. That’s why even people like Beck’s audience, who I’d wager are mostly lower-income people, can’t imagine themselves protesting against the Wall Street barons who in actuality are the ones who fucked them over…
But actual rich people can’t ever be the target. It’s a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master’s carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you’re on board. When you get frisky, he sticks a big cross in the middle of your village, and you spend the rest of your life praying to it with big googly eyes. Or he puts out newspapers full of innuendo about this or that faraway group and you immediately salute and rush off to join the hate squad. A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded, and full of misdirected anger. And that’s what we’ve got now, a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish… can’t be mad at AIG, can’t be mad at Citi or Goldman Sachs. The real villains have to be the anti-AIG protesters! After all, those people earned those bonuses! If ever there was a textbook case of peasant thinking, it’s struggling middle-class Americans burned up in defense of taxpayer-funded bonuses to millionaires. It’s really weird stuff. And bound to get weirder, I imagine, as this crisis gets worse and more complicated.
And now we have another textbook example of this kind of misdirected anger. ACORN, a group that exists to help low- and moderate-income people, has somehow become the target of this rage at corruption that has been brewing since the bailout. ACORN’s priorities are raising the minimum wage, enacting living-wage policies, eliminating predatory lending practices, improving funding for schools, and enrolling voters. What are Lockheed Martin’s priorities? Citibank’s? Halliburton’s? It’s time for all of us to ask ourselves who we really have more in common with.
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