Shannon Bream and Robert Kelner Do Some Fancy Guessing About ACORN and the Census
Reported by Ellen - June 2, 2009 -
Guest blogged by Julie
On Sunday, May 31st, Shannon Bream picked up the baton from Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck and targeted ACORN – again – this time over the census. The crawl read, “Politicizing the census,” and Bream led off with, “ . . . why then is the controversial activist group ACORN involved in the census? Well, we report and you decide.” “Controversial?” “Activist?” You've clearly already decided, Bream, and that's demonstrated by just one queried phrase.
Ewww. I thought some of the other Foxettes were lightweights (okay, they still are), but Shannon Bream seems to have cornered the market on being Fox-News-style interchangeably pretty and vapid with bad linguistic skills.
Bream introduced Robert Kelner, Elections and Political Law Attorney. It's interesting that Fox News would have Kelner on to criticize ACORN, considering that he represented Freddie Mac in the FEC's “largest-ever investigation of a corporation.” You know how Fox News always takes those negative associations and runs with 'em – President Obama and ACORN, for example? I gotta ask - what in God's name are Fox News anchors doing palling around with Freddie-Mac lovers? But I digress.
Bream played a clip of Tom Fitton of the admittedly conservative Judicial Watch.
“This is a really serious issue,” Fitton said. “People want to have faith that the census is depoliticized and when you examine these documents, when you see the attitude towards conservatives, law enforcement, or anti-immigrant – which is their code word for pretty much all conservatives – you see that this is not a bureau that is acting in a neutral fashion.” It would appear from the fact that Fitton did not see fit to elaborate on any of the “documents,” he was also not acting in a “neutral fashion.”
Bream asked Kelner, “What he's talking about there, a couple of lists, it looks like there are lists of groups that the census can use to help them out and be involved with, ACORN's on that list, and a list of groups that they shouldn't be involved with, law enforcement and conservative groups, anti-immigration groups – who would probably call themselves anti-illegal immigration groups.” Nice save for the team. “What is ACORN gonna be doing in the census and should they be doing it?”
Kelner said, “I do think it's troubling. What they're going to be doing, essentially, is helping the U.S. government mobilize workers to actually go out and do the census and it's critical that those people be non-partisan and really not in the service of any particular organizations. It appears that ACORN's gonna have a role and they will help identify those individuals, albeit the U.S. government ultimately has to hire them. There's a real question why you would need to use ACORN to feed workers to the U.S. government in the middle of a recession when frankly it should not be difficult at all to find workers, one would think there's an important public policy behind hiring people for the census, without working through these interest groups.” Okay, so it's a recession, and somebody is going to get these Census jobs, right? Kelner failed to clarify why, in terms of recessionary jobs, it's any different if ACORN provides the workers or if the Census Department hires them directly.
“Especially groups that, they or their affiliates have numerous cases pending and some convictions all across the country, you know,” Bream whined. Uh, reminder – you report, we decide, not the other way around. “Allegations of voter fraud, I mean, why would the U.S. Census think it's okay to partner with that particular group?” There we go again, those Foxettes and their “voter fraud” allegations. Read my lips, gals: It's voter registration fraud, not voter fraud. Mickey Mouse, in fact, didn't cast any votes in the last election. Of course, with Fox News it's the blind leading the blind – on March 18th, Fox News had on its website an article on ACORN and the Census entitled, “ACORN to Play Role in 2010 Census - The U.S. Census Bureau is working with several national organizations to help recruit 1.4 million workers to produce the country's 2010 census, including one with a history of voter fraud charges: ACORN.” (Emphasis mine). Read my lips, people: Voter. Registration. Fraud.
And on another note, nowhere in the allegations of voter registration fraud that I have seen indicated whether the false registrations were in favor of the Republican or Democratic Party. It seems that the term “Democratic-leaning” when referring to the communities ACORN registers voters in is synonymous with “minorities,” with the assumption being no minorities vote for anybody but Democrats. An example, here.
“What we don't know is what kind of vetting process,” Kelner admitted, “ . . . we really don't know how that vetting is being done. ACORN has had several of its workers subject to criminal investigations, including a worker who was actually sentenced criminally last year in Pennsylvania. So I think there are going to be questions about the vetting process, I think there'll be more fundamental questions about, why does the government need to use these interest groups, particularly interest groups that have these controversial past in what should really be an entirely non-partisan exercise.” Kelner didn't happen to mention why ACORN should be labeled a “controversial” or “partisan” group.
Bream asked about “the other side of that, these lists who will not, of those who will not be permitted, your take on that, I mean, a lot of conservative groups here.”
“ . . . you don't want law enforcement involved in the political process,” Kelner said, “I can understand that. Again, I don't think we understand well enough right now why it is they've identified law enforcement, why it is they've identified immigration groups, and they're making these sort of fine judgments about who can partner with them. I think there are going to be a lot of questions from Congress about that, as well there should be.”
It's too bad Fox News doesn't have stock in the words could, might, it appears, we don't understand, I think, and we don't know – 'cause at the rate Fox News is going, they'll soon be able to loan the car industry the money it needs to stay afloat.
