A weblog by Knot O'Reilly

What may be the most ironic and amusing event in Beck’s long-standing and ongoing smear campaign against ACORN is shaping up to have far-reaching implications. Even going as far as accidentally defunding some of the largest military contractors in the United States.

Ryan Grim wrote a recent article for the Huffington Post, that brings up the fact that the recently passed republican sponsored and Glenn Beck promoted, anti-Acorn bill would be unconstitutional if it targeted only one organization, so it sets standards that potentially could free up hundreds of billions in federal funding. This is from the article:

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.

The list of companies potentially affected includes Boeing, Northup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater(Xe), plus lobbying groups, and many more, in several industries. ACORN was receiving an average $3.5 million per year in federal funds. These companies receive tens, maybe hundreds of billions per year. KBR, Halliburton and Blackwater recieved at least $25 billion since 2001.
The companies mentioned have been involved in corruption, misuse of funds, lobbyist violations, foreign bribery and racketeering, and murder. Rep.Grayson is collecting information on government contractors that should be included in the database. Companies that you know have that have been convicted of offences can be reported for inclusion if you have proper sourcing. You are encouraged to visit the site and help out.

It would not be surprising if Beck starts calling for the bill to be declared unconstitutional. Rep. Barney Frank is asking the C.R.S. for clarification, and if the irony of Beck helping defund military contractors is denied us Beck watchers, at least we may get to see him side with Barney Frank.

UPDATE

Raw Story covered this story and they include an interesting statistic form Salon (linked below)

The amount of money that ACORN has received in the past 20 years altogether is roughly equal to what the taxpayer paid to Halliburton each day during the war in Iraq,” Rep. Alan Grayson told Salon’s Glenn Greenwald.

UPDATE #2

Crooks and Liars has a clip of Rachel Maddow with Jeremy Scahill on her show to talk about it. Of course,

Jeremy has some great insights and numbers concerning the depth of the real scandal concerning government contractors, and the passengers on their gravy train.

They also have some graphs from Media Matters which I will include here.