Rumors, Lies, Innuendo, Fear, Uncertainty, and Despair

You’ve heard the story already:

ACORN staffers counsel couple on funding and operating a whorehouse staffed primarily by under-age illegal aliens.

A couple of free-lancers, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, filmed some pretty embarrassing incidents in several ACORN (Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now) offices. The couple masqueraded as being interested in starting a business: a whorehouse, to be blunt about it. They needed help getting money to start this venture. Videos taken in several different ACORN facilities showed similar outcomes: ACORN employees counseling the couple on how to qualify for a house loan (or is there a separate category for whore house loans?) and also giving advice on the employment of illegal, under-age aliens as prostitutes, while claiming them as “dependents” in order to receive welfare benefits (which would, one presumes, include a lot of penicillin shots).

ACORN claimed it was a misunderstanding, that the whole thing was a put-on by its employees who knew they were being filmed, that they were entrapped, etc. ACORN even stood “solidly” behind the videotaped employees, right up to the minute they fired them.

Along with the damning videos, there were allegations of other ACORN improprieties. Congress reacted quickly, cutting off funds to ACORN (who are fairly big feeders at the federal trough). ACORN countered, filing a suit claiming that, under the “bill of attainder” provisions of the US constitution, congress  had no right to suspend funding in light of alleged accusations that had not been proven in a court of law. Like it or not, ACORN is right and a New York judge has upheld ACORN’s claim that it suffered unfairly under the bill of attainder provision of the constitution.

1. You can do your own research on bills of attainder as the history of this issue is complex. It wound up in the US constitution for good reason: briefly stated, it prevents congress from acting as judge, jury and executioner when charges are brought against an individual or organization.
2. 

   “Today’s ruling is a victory for the Constitutional rights for all Americans and for the citizens who work through ACORN to improve their communities and promote responsible lending and homeownership."

   Nonetheless, the evidence that ACORN is, at a minimum, incompetent, and, more likely guilty of violating federal laws is pretty compelling. These are people not to be trusted yet we, as taxpayers, are obligated to continue doing business with them until they are convicted of something. The irony is that by providing ACORN with taxpayer funds we will, directly or indirectly, pay their legal costs.

3. It is obvious that the contracts drawn up between ACORN and whatever federal agencies were providing funds were grossly defective. Congress should not have to have intervened. The language of the contracts with ACORN should have allowed the department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget and the Treasury department unilaterally to suspend doing business with them if there was substantive evidence that ACORN was violating the law.
4. Think of it this way. I run a Quickie Mart. I have numerous video tapes of an individual shoplifting from my store. I even have a video of him robbing me at gunpoint. This guy has not yet been convicted of any of these crimes. He is out on bail, awaiting trial. Am I obligated to do business with him in the meantime? Am I required to allow him even to enter my premises?
5. I speak from personal experience when I point out that a major part of the problem is federal contracting law. Getting on the the list of “approved vendors” for a federal agency is damned difficult. It helps to have donated generously to the campaign of the right congress critters. I have also witnessed, first hand, that once you’re an “approved vendor” you can do just about anything short of shooting the federal contracting officer assigned to your contract.
6. Countless federal contracts wind up in dispute every year. Few make it to court, primarily because the federal contracting officers did not exercise due diligence. The government usually winds up handing additional money over to the party who already has screwed them. And, in the absence of a conviction the “approved vendor” stays on a short list of suppliers free to continue screwing the government and the taxpayers at will.
7. Fifty bucks says ACORN comes out of this with a clean record even though they obviously are incompetent, corrupt, dishonest, and criminal.