Yeah, but Where Was the Ersatz Pimp?

by Eric Martin

I think what we need to do is pass a lawtargeting the entire ACORN organization because some low-level ACORN employees were caught in a video entrapment sting engaging in unethical and, possibly in some instances, illegal behavior (while others behaved quite admirably):

Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials. [...]

Blackwater’s strategy of buying off the government officials, which would have been illegal under American law, created a deep rift inside the company, according to the former executives. They said that Cofer Black, who was then the company’s vice chairman and a former top C.I.A. and State Department official, learned of the plan from another Blackwater manager while he was in Baghdad discussing compensation for families of the shooting victims with United States Embassy officials.

It is an unthinkable outrage that even one federal dollar could end up going to an organization like ACORN.  I expect the media to blanket this comparatively enormous scandal with unrelenting, breathless coverage.

Comments

[MadRocketScientist]

I just don't get the Dems silence on Blackwater

[Ryan]

@MadRocketScientist

What, and have Camille Paglia describe them as shrill? I think not.

[chmood]

Camille Paglia made her bones more than 30 years ago...but has she done anything interesting since then? Other than making weaklings squeal, I mean?

[Curtis]

I don't understand the silence on Blackwater either. But what Blackwater did is not an excuse for what the low-level staffers at Acorn did. The cases are separate.

Now, if you want to hang it on the Republicans, just amend any bill stripping of Acorn of money to also strip Blackwater.

But Acorn isn't innocent because what Blackwater did was worse.

[russell]

The cases are separate.

truer words never.

amend any bill stripping of Acorn of money to also strip Blackwater.

Not remotely enough.

I'm looking for an end to the use of private security forces for US military and foreign policy efforts.

Then I'm looking to see Eric Prince in jail for life for conspiracy to commit murder.

Then I want the money we gave them paid back.

Put all of that on the table and maybe we can talk about ACORN.

[Eric Martin]

But Acorn isn't innocent because what Blackwater did was worse.

No, ACORN's innocence or guilt is not determined by the actions of Blackwater. However, the situations are much different.

On the one hand, Blackwater's management and ownership (one and the same in this instance) bribed Iraqi officials in violation of various laws.

On the other hand, low level staffers that were not ACORN management or ownership engaged in some unethical behavior in response to entrapment.

Targeting the entire ACORN organization for the actions of low level staffers, and stoking a media firestorm in connection therewith, is an overreaction of sizable proportions.

Doing nothing to Blackwater because it changed its name to Xe is, well, curious.

[Point]

Yeah, but Blackwater/Xe has connections to Republicans, which apparently means you can't do anything to them no matter what they did wrong -- even tell them to stop, apparently*.

*TBC, the company in this example is not Blackwater, but does illustrate the principle of "you can't tell us what to do, because..."

[bobbyp]

"But what Blackwater did is not an excuse for what the low-level staffers at Acorn did."

A case absolutely nobody is making, but you don't really care, do you.

[jonnybutter]

Some people can't let go of the ACORN thing precisely *because* it is so low-rent, so squalidly corrupt (what little corruption there actually was). If you want to pay women for sex, you do it like Senator Ensign did - get your mom and dad to write her a check; if you want to cheat the IRS, you buy some congressmen who will make your shirking legal. People despise small-time swindlers, even if the latter don't manage to swindle anything. If you're going to be corrupted and rotten in America, do it big.

Russell has it right: prosecute Blackwater for their cavalcade of crimes, including murders, rape, etc. etc., and give us some of those billions of dollars back, and then we can talk about ACORN.

[bobbyp]

My so-called "progressive" Democratic Congressman, Adam Smith, voted for the execrable ACORN bill. He voted for FISA. He thinks fighting a pointless war in Afghanistan is just a marvelous thing. He had qualms about the Health Care Reform bill.

He will never again get one more thin dime from me, nor my vote.

I have had enough.

[ChrisJ]

"Now, if you want to hang it on the Republicans, just amend any bill stripping of Acorn of money to also strip Blackwater."

Still false equivalency, if by the backdoor.

[Tsutsugamushi]

No, this is not reasonable. Clearly you are unaware of the MSM adagium: "Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi."

[Nate]

How about instead of legitimizing nonsense, we talk about how the US government is employing a mercenary army which has been bribing officials and murdering civilians. Seriously, forget the niceties, forget the nonsense hoopla that's been stirred up, just beat the point about mercenaries who have been bribing politicians and murdering civilians.

Seriously, instead of trying to be clever, if our politicians and media would call things what they are, we could avoid many of these problems.

[Jay C]

@ Tsutsugamushi:

Is this Bon Jovi reference? In Latin?

Yeah: false equivalency on wheels; comparing the (staged and entrapped) actions of a couple of low-level "community activists" in a private-initiative sting DOES NOT equate to the murderous actions of a corporation supplying unaccountable mercenaries for overseas wet-work - and then trying to bribe their way out of 17 murder raps.

Unfortunately, it is unlike that Blackwater/Xe will have to pay much of a price for their crimes, for a number of reasons:

1. They are Republican pets.
2. Their victims were swarthy foreigners off in SwarthyForeignerStan.
3. Their actions were under the "official" color of the Iraq War and "War on Terror" in general.
4. No one in Washington wants to risk the firestorm of bogus outrage from the Right-Wing Noise machine by investigating these bloodstained mercenaries "contractors".

I leave it to the readers to decide the priority of the above....

[Patricia Shannon]

I haven't noticed Republicans calling for discontinuing funding of "faith-based" organizations whose priests raped children, and whose church organizations protected these priests. I guess that's not as bad as voluntary adult prostitution.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

The two cases are completely different, and should be treated as such.

ACORN needs to be thoroughly investigated, and where appropriate, prosecuted.

Blackwater just needs to be cluster-bombed.

[Mike]

Here fucking here. Straight up.

[rea]

Blackwater just needs to be cluster-bombed.

Could we be a little less indiscriminate in our targeting? I live in West Michigan!

[Jesurgislac]

My condolences to you as "collateral damage", rea.

[Hartmut]

Couldn't the government outsource the elimination of that troublesome Blackwater company to some military contractor like this Xe Services LLC I hear so much about?

[Eric Martin]

ha

[russell]

Since we're all bipartisan here, let's not forget profiteering war-mongering creeps from the Democratic side.

h/t Greenwald via Duncan.

[bc]

On the other hand, low level staffers that were not ACORN management or ownership engaged in some unethical behavior in response to entrapment.

Hmmmmmm. Entrapment? No way.

OTOH, I kinda like Snarki's solution.

[Tony P.]

The article Russell links to contains this delicious passage:

Some officials say that his financial ties could raise serious questions about the integrity of the constitutional negotiations themselves. “The idea that an oil company was participating in the drafting of the Iraqi Constitution leaves me speechless,” said Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi, a principal drafter of the law that governed Iraq after the United States ceded control to an Iraqi government on June 28, 2004.

In effect, he said, the company “has a representative in the room, drafting.”

Imagine that: laws drafted by special interest lobbyists. Iraq is closer to American-style democracy than I ever knew.

--TP

[Nombrilisme Vide]

Hmmmmmm. Entrapment? No way.

Narrowly, you are correct, as it was not a law-enforcement agent attempting to induce the behavior.

Otherwise, it doesn't seem clear enough to merit a "no way", as whether or not something is deemed entrapment tends to hinge on the accused being predisposed to commit the offense in question, and that hardly seems cut and dry.