( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Crossposted at Daily Kos

“Death Panels” ain’t got nothing on this!

How can you be for the Death Penalty and be against the “Corporate Death Penalty”?

ACORN was smeared to death, and that sucks. So, how do we make the best of it?

If ACORN must go, the rest of all the Bush Era Crooked Contractors you know and loathe will just have to go too.

On Friday (Spet 25th), Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) inserted into the “legislative history” language spelling out that including all fraudulent organizations was, in fact, the intent of the Congress. ~snip~ “The bill imposes, and is intended to impose, a corporate death penalty on contractors who fall within the scope of its prohibitions.” huffingtonpost.com Bold and Italics added by diarist

What’s good for the goose, or, in this case, nut.

More political judo below the fold.

In their zeal to demonize ACORN, the wingnuts have tied the noose for their MIC contractor patrons. We can thank idiots like Glenn Beck, FOX News and Republican House Minority leader John Boehner for DESTROYING Blackwater, KBR, Haliburton and every other crooked contractors ability to defraud the Government of Tax Payer money if this bill passes.

And, if the Republicans don’t like it, they can vote against their own bill and let ACORN go free, a move that will make the die hard wingnuts spit their tea all over their NASCAR collectable plates.

Looks like Speaker Pelosi and House Dems have totally hornswoggled House Republicans into passing a bill that DESTROYS crooked Defense Contractors and others along with ACORN, who never was found guilty in a court of law, while making it look like that was the plan to begin with.

The original bill looked like it just went after ACORN, but a bit of maneuvering by House Dems has made it a little trickier than that.

As written, as of this moment, the move to go after ACORN would be an Unconstitutional Bill Of Attainder, except for these four suddenly beautiful words “filed a fraudulent form”, which makes the penalties universal for all Government contracts.

As the Ranking Member’s report describes, however, the term “filed a fraudulent form” extends to all organizations that have filed such a form, whether or not such a filing has resulted in a conviction or judgment. The Ranking Member issued a statement yesterday, which said: “For far too long, recipients of federal dollars have been given free reign [sic] and some have acted in a reckless and cavalier way and whether it be ACORN or anyone else – abuse and fraud will not be tolerated.” He added, “frankly, I don’t know how anyone can successfully argue [that] those who actually perpetrate fraud and misuse taxpayer dollars should not be” subject to these prohibitions. huffingtonpost.com Bold added by diarist



Turns out that ranking committee member is Darrell Issa (R-CA), who actually seems (gasp!) concerned about something relevant like Corporate fraud that wastes taxpayers money.

I know, I know, I am shocked too. A Republican who actually uses fiscal conservativism to fight fraud instead of creating it seems almost too good to be true.

Either way, I’m still looking for loopholes on this, as I don’t trust Issa any more than I trust a pet viper. But I don’t think Alan Grayson would work with Issa to screw us either. (Not that such things haven’t happened before, but Grayson seems an unlikely candidate)

So, either the Bill is an Unconstitutional Bill of Attainder, or it has to apply to everyone. WIN/WIN! Either the GOP pushed an idiotic unconstitutional bill, or they have to vote AGAINST their own bill to protect Corporate Corruption with Tax Payer money!

You can still help out ACORN here in their fight against this idiot smear job. Help ACORN here

And we can give some love to Rep. Alan Grayson (Big D-FL) with ActBlue.com here

And the answer to the question “How bad does a Corporation have to screw us before they get theirs?” has an answer, and it is three words.

“Corporate Death Penalty”

Also crossposted at The Progressive Electorate.com