But it is hardly the colossus of right-wing mythology. For proof of ACORN’s meager influence, one need only look at the swift action by Congress to cut off its funding and compare that to the fate of other government contractors under a cloud of far more damning revelations. Like, for instance, Blackwater. As my colleague Jeremy Scahill has reported, a recent federal audit suggests that Blackwater may owe the government $55 million allegedly for failing to meet the terms of just one of its federal contracts. Five of its employees face murder charges for their role in the massacre of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. Yet Blackwater’s $217 million security contract in Iraq was just extended indefinitely by the Obama administration. Or consider former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, which received $80 million in contract bonuses to provide electrical wiring in Iraq; so far, sixteen soldiers and two contractors have died from electrocution from that wiring, precipitating a comprehensive Defense Department review. And in what was perhaps the most buried news story of the summer, there was pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s $2.3 billion fraud settlement with the Justice Department for its illegal promotion of painkiller Bextra and other drugs. According to fedspending.org, Pfizer had more than $73 million in federal contracts in 2007 alone.