WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Congress sank to steamy levels of hypocrisy in de-funding ACORN, the community-organizing group that we have been carefully taught to vilify. A body that has never been able to condemn torture was able, in the end, to condemn what it saw on a made-for-propaganda video.
This is not to say that ACORN should not lose its federal ATM card. The Catholic bishops' Campaign for Human Development cut off the national organization 15 months ago, and had good reasons, relating to weak management, transparency and fiscal accountability.
Unlike Congress, however, the bishops didn't make the decision hypocritically. They were not responding to a Fox News ploy for ratings; they were on ACORN's case while a Republican administration was signing contracts with it. Unlike Congress, the bishops investigated before they acted. And they offered ACORN help in correcting abuses before they pulled the plug, again unlike Congress.
That last contrast is what brings in my gusher. When a defense contractor gets in trouble with Congress, the Pentagon has 15 assorted active and retired generals and colonels at the contractor's offices first thing the next morning to help him get back in good congressional graces. If an agency for poor folks gets in trouble, it receives a form letter and a phone call from an overworked bureaucrat.
Because let's be straight about what ACORN and its government contracts are really all about. This is all about getting some sort of government subsidy to the poor to show off beside the government subsidies that go to Halliburton, Blackwater and Chrysler.
Fifty years ago, when the military-industrial complex became too big to ignore, sociological research was available showing that poor people can manage their lives at least as well as do-gooders telling them what to do. With some members acting from sociological or moral motives and others smelling pork, Congress began to subsidize community organizations under the banner of the war on poverty.
It never involved big money. Defense contractors wouldn't wash their hands to grab what the likes of ACORN get. Still it wasn't long before reactionaries went to work. The first part to be whittled away was money for law firms that serve poor folks. "Let the poor pay for legal services the way corporations do" was the attitude. But what does that really imply? Banks are using federal bailout money, for instance, to pay lawyers to lobby against stricter federal accounting rules.
When ACORN, which began as a housing advocacy group, got into voter registration, its doom was as good as sealed. It could not afford to screw up. One of our major parties opposes voter registration.
The last straw — or so ACORN's enemies pretend — was a video showing a hooker and her pimp (played by amateur actors) getting housing advice from ACORN functionaries. For the sins of the functionaries, Congress pulled the plug.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., just called for an investigation of the death of the 19th American soldier or contractor in Iraq to be electrocuted while taking a shower in a building put up by one of the no-bid contractors who cashed in on the Iraq war. Investigations of faulty wiring have been going on since 2004.
Maybe Sen. Reid can find a cause for action if someone stages a video showing how easy it is to get killed while cooling off in a hot country.
Said a minority leader in the other chamber, Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., "Today the House voted to ensure that taxpayer dollars would no longer be used to fund this corrupt organization." Rep. Cantor was talking about a bunch of poor people, not a corporation that electrocutes GIs with sloppy construction. But you could have guessed that.
Tom Blackburn is a former member of The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board. E-mail: tom(underscore)blackburn(at)juno.com.