Alan Grayson's Group Work
BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, September 23 2009
As Republicans and Democrats put away their differences last week to sign off on legislation that would pulling federal funding from ACORN in the wake of a disturbing series of video tapes, you have to wonder how many of the 173 folks on the right side of the aisle and 172 on the left actually read the text of the so-called Defund ACORN Act.
That's because it doesn't take a legislative genius to see that H.R. 3571, as written, would actually defund far more than the targeted community organizing group. The Defund ACORN Act's net scoops up, among other entities, "Any organization that has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency." Representative Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida, reads that provision to include the fraud-committing federal defense contractors whom he has been investigating since taking office -- and he'd like to put their names in the Congressional Record.
The thing is, as a freshman member of the House, Grayson has a tiny staff. So he's looking for backup. Grayson's office has set up a quick and dirty Google Spreadsheet and is asking for help identifying and documenting the misbehaving contractors inadvertently covered by the Defund ACORN Act:
Now, I'm just one person, and I can't possibly find and list all of the organizations that fit this bill. So I need your help. Please nominate organizations and show me that they need to be in the record. To help, send me the name of the organization and proof in the form of a link to evidence that this organization should be in the Congressional record. I will also need your email address so I can follow-up with you if necessary. The proof you send needs to be easily verifiable, as in credible media reports, legal documents, government data, or otherwise.
Among the suggestions captured in the Google Doc is the contracting giant Lockheed Martin, whose size dwarfs ACORN's. According to the Contractor Misconduct database from the Project on Government Oversight, which is helping Grayson flesh out his list, Lockheed has been guilty of about $577 million worth of fraud against the federal government since 1995 -- which is about ten times ACORN's total federal funding in that same time period. Huffington Post's Ryan Grim has more.
And check the above video for how you or your organization can go about quickly setting up a simple Google Spreadsheet web interface of the sort Grayson is using.