bill of attainder

ACORN Challenges Cut-Off Of Federal Funds After Child Prostitution Scandal, Claiming It Is ‘Unconstitutional’

by Hans Bader on November 12, 2009

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

ACORN has just filed a lawsuit in New York challenging as “unconstitutional” its loss of federal funds after its role in a child prostitution scandal was exposed.  Earlier, it sued those who exposed its role in that scandal for $2 million, claiming that the exposure violated its privacy rights under state audiotaping laws.  ACORN claims that Congress’s vote to cut off federal funds to ACORN is an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

ACORN is a left-wing group that launched President Obama’s career as a community organizer (ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).  Obama has long-standing ties to ACORN, and an ACORN affiliate received received $800,000 from Obama’s campaign.  Earlier, a liberal prosecutor (and fervent Obama supporter) threatened to punish those who exposed ACORN’s scandalous actions, while turning a blind eye to ACORN’s wrongdoing.  Now, however, Obama is quite rationally distancing himself from ACORN, which has become an embarrassment to its one-time supporters.

Legal scholars like Hans Von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation have explained why Congress’s cut-off of funds to ACORN was perfectly constitutional.  It is easy to see why Congress would not want scarce federal funds to go to ACORN, which has a long history of terrible financial mismanagement, waste of funds, financial fraud, vote fraud, and tax evasion.  Congress had many legitimate,  non-punitive reasons for cutting off funds to ACORN.

ACORN’s lawsuit is brought by the radically left-wing Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).  CCR’s founder, William Kunstler, was very open about the fact that he believed in civil liberties only for left-wingers in capitalist societies, not for dissidents of any stripe in Communist countries.  A classic example was his attitude towards dissidents in South Vietnam.  Many of these dissidents were liberals who had once criticized the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government.  After communist North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam, the dissidents began politely criticizing the human-rights abuses of the new government.  They were promptly sent to re-education camps, where they were starved or tortured to death.  The new Communist government turned out to be far crueler than the old right-wing government, which had at least allowed dissidents to live.

When some liberals, like Joan Baez, criticized this oppression against dissidents they had once worked with, William Kunstler refused to do so, saying that once a communist regime took power, he was not in favor of criticizing it for any human-rights abuses it committed.  Kunstler said, “I don’t believe in criticizing socialist governments publicly, even if there are human-rights violations.”  To Kunstler, civil liberties were just a tool to be used to bring down capitalist governments and pave the way for a communist “dictatorship of the proletariat.”  Once such a dictatorship was in power, there was no more need for civil liberties or individual freedoms of any kind, since individual freedom could only prove an obstacle to the socialist transformation of society.

Cutting Off Funds to ACORN Is Constitutional, and Would Protect Against Voter and Financial Fraud

by Hans Bader on September 29, 2009

in Healthcare, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

Earlier, ACORN was caught in a scandal, promoting child prostitution. Both Houses of Congress voted to cut off federal funds to ACORN.  Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and other ACORN supporters argued that this was an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

Hans Von Spakovsky, a legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation, explains why it is perfectly constitutional to cut off funds to ACORN, under controlling Supreme Court precedent.

ACORN receives taxpayer money despite a long history of financial fraud, vote fraud, and tax evasion.

Mickey Kaus, a Democrat, notes that it was ACORN that tipped the close Minnesota Senate race to Al Franken. ACORN has long been active in voter registration drives designed to put liberals in office. It registered most of the state’s new voters, and helped put in office the Minnesota Secretary of State who presided over the controversial recount that switched the lead in Minnesota’s Senate race from incumbent Norm Coleman to Al Franken.  Some lawyers have argued that the election was stolen.  The recount process was also marred by the peculiar actions of the Minnesota Canvassing Board, which treated clear votes for Coleman as non-votes or as votes for Franken.

Far from being contrite about its actions, ACORN is now suing the whistleblowers who exposed its wrongdoing, seeking millions of dollars, and an unconstitutional injunction to silence them.

ACORN is a left-wing group that launched Barack Obama’s career as a community organizer. He has long-standing ties to ACORN, and an ACORN affiliate received received $800,000 from Obama’s campaign.  (Small wonder that Obama has turned out to be the most left-wing president in American history).

Showing as little respect for the First Amendment as ACORN, Obama recently slapped an unconstitutional gag order on a critic of his health-care plan.

Obama’s health-care plan would force states to radically increase their Medicaid spending, resulting in massive tax increases or massive deficits at the state level.

Obama’s health care plan would also raise federal taxes, break campaign promises, increase the federal budget deficit, destroy many inexpensive health-care plans, and take away important freedoms.

Cutting off funds to ACORN would not affect its many affiliates that receive taxpayer money from state and federal agencies.

Bank of America recently suspended its funding of ACORN, which has long used the threat of lawsuits, demonstrations, and regulatory complaints to shake down banks.

ACORN helped spawn the mortgage crisis by promoting “liar loans.”

ACORN stands to profit greatly from Obama’s financial-regulation proposals, which would strengthen the Community Reinvestment Act.  (The Community Reinvestment Act is extremely harmful to banks and prudent lending, pressuring banks to make risky, low-income loans.)

ACORN is a “creature of the Community Reinvestment Act” (CRA), which gives groups like ACORN the ability to shake down banks, by accusing them of making insufficient low-income loans.