It’s funny how certain sections of the American public, with the help of mainstream media of course, are now so outraged by the actions of a handful of ACORN employees that Congress is now bravely cutting off all funding for this already underfunded, inconsequential organization.  Yet the recent — nearly invisible — actions in Kabul by morons working for the private  military contractor ArmorGroup, being paid far greater sums of American taxpayer dollars than anything dreamed  of by ACORN, have been dismissed by the same media as little more than the exploits of silly boys letting off a little steam.  Sure a few will be fired, but have a look for yourself:

Let’s put the whole issue into perspective.  ACORN, a non-profit, grass-roots organization that represents poor Americans has received a  mere $53 million in federal funds since 1994, while these douchbag contractors from ArmorGroup are the recipients of a $189 million 5-year contract to defend the US embassy in Kabul.  That comes to $3.5 million a year for ACORN as opposed to nearly $38 million per year for ArmorGroup.  Where’s the outrage?  Barely a peep is heard.

One of the more obvious problems stemming from the government’s need for contractors like ArmorGroup — a relatively minor player in the realm of private military contractors — is that, given the US government’s commitment to the military occupation of Afghanistan and  Iraq, the Pentagon must rely on these sorts of  for-profit corporations to fulfil the work and procedures once handled by the US  military.

It’s so bad  that actions like those pictured above must go un-addressed.  There’s little the Pentagon can do, even though they have had multiple problems with ArmorGroup.  The New York Times recently discussed this issue:

The troubles with the ArmorGroup contract, and the State Department’s frustrated dealings with the company over two years and through two administrations, illustrate how the government has become dependent on the private security companies that work in war zones, and has struggled to manage companies that themselves are sometimes loosely run and do not always play by the government’s rules.

With a stretched military, the government relies on the security companies themselves to vet, train, and discipline the guards, all at the lowest cost.

“It’s expensive for the State Department to withdraw a contract from one company, rebid the project and award it to a new one,” said Janet Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who represents one of the ArmorGroup whistleblowers. “So businesses know that once they get a contract, State may ding them around a little bit, but it’s not going to fire them.”

The perils of this reliance were most graphically illustrated in Iraq in 2007, when security guards from another contractor, Blackwater, were involved in shootings that left 17 civilians dead on a Baghdad street. But interviews and documents show that the ArmorGroup affair, in its mundane, unsavory details, offers perhaps a more representative look inside the troubled relationship between contractors and the government in war zones.

Technorati Tags: ACORN, ArmorGroup, media, media reform, military contractors

Writing at the Huffington Post, media reform campaigner Timothy Karr has a great article on what really scares rightwing TV and radio fearmongers like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Lou Dobbs: greater localism and diversity in media.  Karr exposes their self-serving lies with a healthy dose of reality — which has a well-known liberal bias — pointing out, “The central mandate of the Federal Communications Commission — as enshrined in the Communications Act of 1934 — is to promote localism, diversity and competition in the media. This same principle of localism has been a rallying cry for several generations of true conservatives.”

He continues:

Broadcasters get hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of subsidies and the right to use our airwaves in exchange for a basic commitment to be responsive to the interests of local communities.

Moreover, the Supreme Court recognized that “safeguarding the public’s right to receive a diversity of views and information over the airwaves is … an integral component of the FCC’s mission.”

Sadly, the FCC has failed to live up to this standard. And what mainstream media’s fear-merchants are most afraid of is not censorship, but an FCC that actually does its job — creating more opportunities for people like you and me to participate in media.

We don’t have that now. Washington bureaucrats have allowed powerful media corporations to control the public airwaves and dominate local cable networks. We have reached a nadir where the free press that Thomas Jefferson hoped would open “all the avenues to truth” has devolved into a media system that’s a megaphone for the few.  Read on…

Truer, more obvious words couldn’t have been spoken.  The only way to break the current dominance of these paranoid, faux-populist douchebags is to demand the FCC regulate the public (i.e., our) airwaves by honoring its founding principles of diversity and localism.

Technorati Tags: censorship, CNN, Fox News Channel, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, media reform, Rush Limbaugh, Timothy Karr