Norbrook’s Blog: …. other people have examined Accountability Now, which Jane and Glenn Greenwald launched with great fanfare a few years ago. Ostensibly it was to recruit progressive candidates, but it seemed to end up putting money into Jane and Glenn’s pockets:
Accountability Now collected $113,695 in donations during 2009, as it reported to the FEC, and spent $169,992 that year on nine consultants … including Hamsher ($24,000) and PAC cofounder Glenn Greenwald ($24,000)….
But it’s not Jane’s only PAC. Although most of the scrutiny has been on Accountability Now, when you look at FDL Action PAC’s FEC summary, you see something very interesting:
Fire Dog Lake: $90,063 …. Commonsense Media: $9,920
Hmm… it looks like there’s about $100K of “synergy” going on ….
…. recently Jane had a little blow-up, right after OFA announced what the President had raised (“a staggering $47 million in the past three months”)….
FDL Action’s fundraising wasn’t quite as good:
No wonder she’s pissed! Apparently all the previous donors have been thoroughly shorn, and new sheep aren’t lining up….
Read the full superb post here
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Norbrook’s post is brilliantly timely in light of Hamsher and Dan Choi’s arrests today outside the White House (along with another 60 or so people who actually do care about the environment - but you won’t hear much about them). They were staging a laudable (in my humble opinion) demonstration urging President Obama to block a proposed pipeline that would bring oil from Canada’s oil sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries (the Keystone XL pipeline).
Choi tweeted this yesterday:
Okay, so now that he can’t attack the President any more on gay rights issues - without looking even sillier than usual - he’s discovered (true, somewhat belatedly) that he really, really cares about the planet. And if caring about it so much sees him end up in jail, thereby getting him some attention again (when, really, most had forgotten he existed), then that’s a cross he’d, um, have to bear. Mission accomplished, well done Dan.
Hamsher?
Well, you have to admire her purity on this one. She is so passionate and utterly sincere about the blocking of the Keystone XL pipeline she would never, ever have anything to do with anyone who supported it, right?
June 2011:
Dear friends,
…..Hillary Clinton’s State Department is holding up the Canadian-American Keystone XL pipeline … unnecessarily inhibiting billions in economic activity and hundreds of thousands of jobs from being created, the State Department is preventing a much-needed regional stimulus. Click here to tell the State Department to get out of the way of America’s job creators and issue the Keystone XL pipeline building permit!
Onward,
Grover Norquist
President
Americans for Tax Reform
Ah yes, Hamsher’s old buddy, the ‘tax pledge’ guy who makes Rick Perry seems like Mao Tse Tung, the one she collaborated with in opposition to President Obama (and his then Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel).
What? She can partner the lovely Grover on one issue, it doesn’t mean she agrees with him on everything?
Of course! Just like she can team up with President Obama when … oh, never mind.
Any way, those of you who might suggest that this….
…. might have had something to do with Hamsher’s heartfelt concerns about the Keystone XL pipeline - and you can be sure she lies awake at night worrying about it … even though she has a hard-hitting interview with Cenk Uygur the next day (“Jane, you’re, like, soooooooo great!” “I know Cenk - but you are too!”) …. shame on you.
Yes, she has been jailed, and she may well claim she was waterboarded while she was in there, and that will raise her sinking profile, and may even attract a few more dollars to her struggling PAC, but ….. shame on you.
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PS
Ooooops, $$$$$ are creating a strain between the Firebaggers.
John Aravosis has started selling these t-shirts on his “I HATE OBAMA SO MUCH I CAN’T EVEN FIND THE WORDS ” blog:
….and that’s made Hamsher’s peeps very, very angry:
Oh noes, the Firebaggers are eating each other alive …. after all, there are only so many $$$$ to go around
A second PS:
Credit must go to Aravosis, having picked only white male models for the t-shirts he’s being trying to sell so far…
….. he chose a ‘non-white’ man for his ‘Proud Firebagger’ offering. Jeez, if he added a woman to the line-up we might even accuse him of being inclusive.
‘Obama’ sneaks up on unsuspecting babies and tries to indoctrinate them with his brand of Hitlerism
After entering seriously ugly Firedogfake/Glenn GreenBeck cyberspace territory today to read up on a bunch of stuff, including Firedogfake’s threats to Eclectablog (see here), what struck me most was the seething hatred of Barack Obama the man, never mind Barack Obama the President.
I sometimes enter Teabagger territory just to entertain myself with their spectacular stupidity, but honestly, even there you’d struggle to find the same levels of hatred that you get from Firedogfake, Glenn GreenBeck and the like.
We are talking foaming-at-the-mouth hatred here.
Here’s an example.
On May 18 of this year this was posted at Jane Hamsher’s Firedogfake:
It’s now July 18th and that post - about the need for “Afro-Americans” to enter an “education program” - is still on FDL.
Hamsher owns FDL, so she owns this post - so spare us all the excuse that it was only written by one of FDL’s diarists. If Hamsher found an entry on the site that was critical of her, she’d have it deleted in a blink of an eye.
But a post about the need for “Afro-Americans” to enter an “education program” is, evidently, perfectly fine.
Truly, this is as ugly as it can get.
Let’s cut the crap and call it for what it is: Hamsher and her FDL sheeple are race-baiting scum.
If they weren’t, an FDL post calling for “Afro-Americans” to be entered in an “education program” would have been deleted.
But it’s still there.
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The more anonymous threats I get from Hamsherbots, the more I’ll post about her - and that’s a promise
Unlike Hamsher, I don’t – and never, ever will – ask for or accept donations.
If anyone has a few dollars to spare, I will ask them to contribute to Obama/Biden 2012.
Some of us aren’t in it for the money or attention – truly, we’re just not that desperate.
Hiya everyone, sorry I wasn’t able to be around much yesterday, hopefully I’ll catch up later today. Just to say, thanks so much for the great response to the ‘Here we go again‘ post below - but honestly, I can’t take any credit at all for its content, that’s down to the excellent work being done by bloggers like:
Extreme Liberal: Adam Green’s Dishonest Attack And Appeal For Cash (here)
Progressive Electorate: Jane Hamsher’s Accountability Now PAC Raises $$ Questions (here)
Rcade (Daily Kos): How Jane Hamsher Spends Her PAC Money (here)
Drumsnwhistles: Federal Election Commission to Jane Hamsher: Tell us more, please (here)
Workbench: How Jane Hamsher Spends Her PAC Money (see here)
Osbornelink: Nixon had a word for people like Jane Hamsher (here)
Mother Jones: Strange Bedfellows Indeed (Hamsher and Grover Norquist) (here)
HistoryByDay (Young Turks): Jane Hamsher - Bought And Sold? (here)
Rooted Cosmopolitan: Media Types: Don’t Call Someone Who Works for Republicans a Disaffected Progressive (here)
W.E.E. See You: Lip Synching Liberals – WEE Told You So (here)
Osbornelink: Jane The Hamsher Strikes Again (here)
Moderate Left: Can’t Shake the Devil’s Hand and Say You’re Only Kidding (here)
Drumsnwhistles: Jane Hamsher’s crusade to hand government back to conservatives (here)
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I’m sure I’ve left out lots more great links - if you think of any please add them in the comments and I’ll update the post. And if you can, read through those links, they reveal so much.
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Update - thanks Hopefruit:
Smartypants: Some of you probably read a recent article by Eclectablog titled Why I will never post another word at My.Firedoglake.com. He also posted it at Daily Kos.
Apparently Hamsher saw it because according to this post at Angry Black Lady, he got the following email from one of her employees:
The chances of you becoming a paid front pager somewhere have dropped significantly … Jane will never forget and she will bad mouth you to the major blog owners if your name comes up. She is a friend of Marcos [sic] and Josh Marshall and the guys who run the American Prospect and pretty much anyone on the liberal side of the blogs and you’ve made a major career fuck up.
…. It’s past time for folks to wake up and smell the rancid brew this woman is creating …. What this email does expose is her motives and strategy. I think it’s high time that word got out and people started to ask proprietors at blogs like Daily Kos, Think Progress and the American Prospect to stand up and show their independence by denouncing Hamsher and any associations they might have had with her.
…. If the cost of being a paid liberal blogger is kowtowing to someone who will try to destroy your career if you say something negative about her, I won’t pay that price. I probably make more money in my day job than Jane does keeping the internet safe from pragprog Obama supporters and I can blog circles around her doing it as a hobby.
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Read the full post here - and read Eclectablog on his experience here.
And see this post from Smartypants from June about Matt Osborne - he was “offered a paid writing gig in “the movement” (his term), but was told that if he took it, he would have to dial back the criticism of Hamsher”. (See Osborne’s Tweets from Netroots Nations here - thanks Angry Black Lady)
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A writer at ExiledOnline had a similar experience to Eclectablog - see here
“….. Within minutes after this article was posted, Michael Whitney of Firedoglake sent Mike Elk, author of this article, the classic Hollywood death-knell: “You’ll never work in this town again.” Whitney, who once ran a labor blog for Firedoglake until it was taken down because it was so poorly put together and drew such anemic traffic, now serves as Vice President of the Membership Board for Firedoglake. Apparently one of his duties is acting as Hamsher’s hall monitor, policing the internet for anyone not sufficiently worshipful of his employer.”
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BWD posted a Deepak Chopra article today at The Only Adult In The Room (see below) which made me think of this line from the Moderate Left link above. It was a reference to Hamsher teaming up with Grover Norquist in their anti-Rahm Emanuel campaign and her working against the President’s healthcare reform efforts (remember, she teamed up with the Tea Party on that issue: see here):
“She is now working with people who do not wish to improve the Obama Administration, but instead wish to destroy it.”
And that’s been the way since day one, even before he had a chance to ‘betray!’ them. She and her Firedogfake sheeple will team up with literally anyone to try to defeat the President in 2012 - even Norquist and the Tea Party!!- regardless of the consequences for America. And still they call themselves progressives.
Any way, here are some extracts from that Chopra article:
Deepak Chopra: One of the virtues of being on the liberal side of politics is that total obedience isn’t required …. In a political climate where it feels as if the inmates are running the asylum - as in the current Republican threat to default on America’s debt - the prevailing sanity of President Obama is something that others and I have taken for granted.
We cannot afford that luxury any more, I’m afraid.
For many reasons, this is the moment when loyalty is going to count the most. That’s a hard sentence to write. Liberal politics is based on a non-regimented, all-inclusive approach to democracy. Freedom of thought is paramount. But certain harsh realities must be faced. For thirty years and more, the progressive tradition has been severely undermined, dating back to Nixon’s “Southern strategy” (coddle the racists) and Ronald Reagan’s smiling reactionary agenda (AIDS victims deserve what they get), through the first President Bush’s Willie Horton strategy (another boost for racism) and the second President Bush’s deceptive “compassionate conservatism.”
It was such a relief to return to humane, non-ideological governance when President Obama won in 2008 that we underestimated the debasing effect that two generations of right-wing indoctrination has had …
…. all of us who have taken advantage of our liberal heritage to question and criticize President Obama need to step back and consider the radical nature of the opposition, from the Supreme Court down to the local precinct … …. Since 9/11, playing upon fear has been wildly successful for the right wing - it re-elected a catastrophic president…
If ever there was a time to stand behind the captain, this is it. Not because pluralism and free expression are wrong. They aren’t and never will be. But like Churchill calling upon a coalition cabinet in the depth of the war years, it’s paramount that we see the greater danger for what it is. Attention was drawn to the cover of a recent issue of the Economist, which showed a tall President Obama towering over a squabbling handful of pygmy Republican rivals for the presidency. The headline read, “He Could Still Lose.” We need to remember that if that were to happen, it wouldn’t be because President Obama made too many mistakes or failed to pass a sufficiently liberal agenda. The reason would be that all of us forgot the 30-year reign of reactionary administrations (minus the Clinton years) and the power of debased politics to keep coming back, again and again.
I posted this (here) the other day (see more at osborneink):
HistoryByDay (March 2010)
That’s right, ‘progressive’ OUTRAGE! peddlers Miss BP (aka the Hamsher creature, Tea Party and Grover Norquist buddy) and Republican/Libertarian Gary Johnson’s Number One fan (aka Greenwald) paid themselves $24,000 each for “strategic consulting” from Accountability Now donations - precisely $24,000 more than they donated in 2008 and 2010 to candidates challenging “corporate-controlled incumbents”, as they promised Accountability Now would do.
And how was most of their money raised? By sending out hysterical emails to their sheeple distorting the words of President Obama, firing up the hate …. and then pleading for donations to fight this dastardly traitor.
Well, well, well …. here we go again:
The Reid Report: Adam Green runs the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an entity designed to automatically disgorge mass solicitation emails attacking President Obama every time the president speaks, thereby raising copious amounts of cash to … um … what do they do, exactly? Oh, right… to buy a few ads attacking President Obama and the occasional Republican.
Green and his fellow travelers on the anti-Obama left have been spoiling for a fight with the White House on entitlements, which these folks are apparently convinced Barack Obama is about to feed into a giant shredding machine …. but Green’s latest fundraising email, which landed in my in-box just after 7 p.m. on Monday (and was headlined BREAKING, even though the news it refers to happened hours earlier, at 11 a.m.) opens on an exquisitely dishonest note:
BREAKING: Obama outrage.
Joy-Ann,
BREAKING: Today, in a press conference, President Obama came right out and said it: He’s pushing for benefit cuts in important programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
You and 175,000 others boldly pledged that if Obama actually cuts Medicare/Medicaid benefits, you’ll take your money and volunteering elsewhere in 2012.
Green then urges recipients to sign a pledge not to give money to the Obama campaign if he cuts Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security ….. presumably, they should give money to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee instead…
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Ah yes, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee:
Wow, $725.2k of funds raised in 2010 went on “administrative costs”, $503,788 of that on “salaries and benefits” ….. oh, look:
OpenSecrets
Good. Grief.
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Read ExtremeLiberal on this very issue here
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Very interesting post from last year:
Workbench (2010): …. PACs have different policies regarding whether they compensate the people who run the committees. Some don’t accept one cent of donor money and devote it all to their cause, while others pay themselves salaries, travel expenses and office rent. I interviewed Darcy Burner, a former Democratic Congressional candidate from Washington state who runs the not-for-profit Progressive Congress Action Fund, to learn whether it’s common for left-wing PACs to pay themselves. “The bigger PACs require full-time staff to operate — to raise money, to vet candidates [and] to file reports,” she said. “I think the key question would be more one of whether people giving the money understand what it will be used for. … There’s a trust relationship with donors that requires some truth and transparency about how money is going to be used.”
Read Shoq’s experience with Miss BP here - and their Twitter exchange here
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This gem of a 2010 story by David Weigel (now Slate) in the Washington Independent can never be re-posted enough:
Weigel was reporting on an anti-healthcare reform Tea Party rally where he spoke to one of the organizers and speakers, Kathryn Serkes. She told him:
“I’m in contact with folks on the progressive side. They’re saying right now that Pelosi’s almost there with the votes. What they’re saying is that there’s some serious arm-twisting - their words were union thuggery. One progressive source told me that there was serious union thuggery this weekend, targeting Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.).”
The source, she confirmed, was Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.
Weigel emailed Hamsher to ask her if she was, in fact, working with the Tea Party on the issue and if she had used the term “union thuggery” in her conversations with Serkes.
Hamsher didn’t reply, instead posting this at Firedoglake in response to his report (‘Tea Party Activist Working With Firedoglake’s Hamsher on HCR Whip Count’ - here)
“Dave Weigel isn’t a journalist, he’s a smear-monger that makes things up and projects his own fantasies onto his stories ….I know Katherine, we were on MSNBC together and we’ve spoken about working on the pot legalization measure in California in the future …. she tells me that when Weigel approached her and asked her who her “source” was, she didn’t say. He said “It’s Jane Hamsher, isn’t it…I’ve been around.” According to Katherine, she didn’t respond.
….I’m not “working” with the tea partiers on health care. But Weigel doesn’t care about the truth …. He’s just a fantasist printing propaganda, and the Washington Independent has no higher standards than to print it.”
Problem?
Weigel had a recording of his conversation with the Tea Party woman:
SERKES: They’re saying that there’s some serious arm-twisting, and their words were union thuggery.
WEIGEL: Who’s the they?
SERKES: The progressive side. A progressive source told me that there was serious union thuggery going on this weekend.
WEIGEL: Is this the Firedoglake folks?
SERKES: It’s Jane. You’re figured it out.
WEIGEL: I’m not new at this.
SERKES: She said they were after Altmire this weekend. Yeah, because Jane and I last talked Saturday.
Hamsher’s response to being outed?
“Weigel has now posted the audio tape of his conversation with Katherine Serkes at the Tea Party event, in which he does not inform her that he was taping her. The recording confirms that she did use my name, however. I’ve asked Weigel twice now if at any point prior to this segment he informed her that she was being recorded, and he has not responded.
…. attending a Tea Party event and taping attendees without their knowledge, then posting that tape to discredit them in support of passing the health care bill, sounds more like the actions of a Democratic political operative …. he aspires to be a member of a cliquish, insider set with the moral flexibility to align themselves with anyone in power.”
Ah yes, the big issue here was the recording, not the fact that it had been revealed that Hamsher was working with the Tea Party towards their common goal: the defeat of President Obama’s healthcare bill. Or that Serkes quoted Hamsher using Tea Party speak: “Union thuggery.” Note how she failed to address being exposed, instead resorting to personal abuse.
(Links: here and here)
After exposing Hamsher, Weigel asked for “an apology and a retraction” - he’s still waiting.
*****
Fox and Friend:
Yep, she joined in on Fox News’ ‘Kill The Bill’ campaign, appearing on the network soon after calling for a boycott of it.
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This story, from May of this year, is an eye-opener too:
Mike Elk (ExiledOnline, May 2011): Yesterday I confronted Jane Hamsher, founder of Firedoglake, over her refusal to honor a labor boycott against the Huffington Post that two major writers unions have called for.
… Hamsher wasn’t satisfied merely crossing the picket line: She went on the offensive against boycott organizers … In an email exchange with several members of the labor movement, Hamsher jeered at the writers’ union organizers, mocking their organizing efforts….
In response to Hamsher’s outrageous anti-labor attacks, I wrote to one of these listserv groups on which both Hamsher and I were members: “Jane Hamsher the last person I would ever want to have as my shop steward” … this was not the first time Hamsher has taken a position hostile to workers’ rights and labor ….
…Hamsher also attacked Sal Roselli (president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers) implying that he was an Italian thug, an old tactic used by anti-labor PR people to smear labor activists as mobsters ….
….When I raised this ugly episode yesterday in the context of Hamsher’s attacks on the HuffPo boycott, Hamsher responded to me, “You’re just halucinating [sic] now, Mike. I never ‘tried to get people fired from their jobs,’ nor did I ever use ‘race baiting language to paint Sal Roselli as a thug.’….You’re either really mentally ill, or incredibly malicious.”
….. This was a new low for Hamsher. She and I had previously discussed my struggle with depression and Asperger’s Syndrome … I pointed out to Jane that such comments from her about my struggle with mental health were extraordinarily hurtful and petty .. I replied that my ability to analyze and criticize the labor situation at the Huffington Post should be judged by the merits of my analysis, and not by my battles with mental illness.
Hamsher became even more petty and vindictive - she responded by attacking me:
“You don’t have ‘analysis,’ you’re either a liar or you have no ability to discern the truth.” …. “You can’t blame either on asperger’s syndrome. That’s not a symptom. Your reflexive crouch into tribalism and ‘poor me’ to excuse reprehensible behavior is really feeble.” …. “This may be due to the fact that you’re incredibly sick, and unable to discern reality….”
… I know I have mental illness issues and it took me a very long time to finally have the courage to write about them in public. But I have to ask Hamsher: what sort of pathology drives a woman of her stature and prominence to belittle the mental illness of a young reporter who has done nothing but stand up for workers’ rights and union democracy?
….Update from The eXiled Editor: Within minutes after this article was posted, Michael Whitney of Firedoglake sent Mike Elk, author of this article, the classic Hollywood death-knell: “You’ll never work in this town again.” Whitney … now serves as Vice President of the Membership Board for Firedoglake. Apparently one of his duties is acting as Hamsher’s hall monitor, policing the internet for anyone not sufficiently worshipful of his employer….
Full post here
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See here
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See here
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Rooted Cosmopolitan
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Five years ago she posted this photoshopped picture of Joe Lieberman as a ‘black’ man on Huffington Post, in an attempt to describe his efforts to “woo African American voters”. The photo was promptly removed, and she offered a ‘sorry if you were offended’ apology.
Link
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Osborneink.com (December 2010): Jane the Hamsher is one of the cool kids… yet she wouldn’t recognize progress if it smacked her in the face, and so far has achieved nothing resembling progress on any front. Indeed, I have been waiting for someone to tell me what this woman’s “progressive” credentials are.
She is first and foremost a self-aggrandizing publicity whore whose Accountability Now PAC has so far given $0 to progressive candidates in the first two years of its existence while spending $285,272. If she ran a non-profit this way, it would get shut down. As things stand, the PAC (which also counts Kos and Glenn Greenwald as operators) has only made noise.
…. Hamsher’s kill-the-bill madness included an appearance on FOX News just months after her own call to boycott the network. She later returned to that channel spouting nonsense about cap-and-trade. Her recent appearances on Lawrence O’Donnell leave me convinced progress is not her purpose.
Jane has a troubling problem with transparency and truthfulness. Her web ad company took money from BP while Hamsher simultaneously attacked the Sierra Club for doing the same. The numbers for Accountability Now complete the picture: Jane Hamsher is a for-profit fringe phenomenon.
Accountability Now PAC began with $15,841 from BreakTheMatrix, a Ron Paul organization - meaning the money trail leads to the same libertarianism that spawned the tea party…..
…There is nothing “left” left about Hamsher. She is known as a firebagger, after the name of her website. But in Nixon’s time, she would have been called a ratfucker.
ADDING: As you can see by the comments below, this post has brought the FDL chorus out in full song to accuse this blog of being a “cult” to the “dear leader.” It’s all projection: Hamsher and Greenwald are the closest thing the left has to cult figures. Regular readers will know this blog rarely posts on lefties and will recognize their behavior from my examinations of the Glenn Beck cult.
Full post here
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rcade (DK, March 2010): Firedoglake publisher Jane Hamsher has become one of the most polarizing figures in the liberal blogosphere, moving people sharply to the pro or con column with her outspoken opposition to the health care reform bill, appearances on Fox News bashing the Obama administration and the letter she sent with conservative activist Grover Norquist demanding the resignation of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Hamsher wields a lot of influence by operating two Democratic political action committees, FDL Action PAC and Accountability Now PAC. By the end of 2009 these PACs had accumulated $454,000 from thousands of individual donors….
The Federal Election Commission reports show that Hamsher’s PACs are a significant source of income for Firedoglake, but my experience trying to question her about them suggests that she’s not big on transparency.
… Accountability Now collected $113,695 in donations during 2009, as it reported to the FEC, and spent $169,992 that year on nine consultants … including Hamsher ($24,000) and PAC cofounder Glenn Greenwald ($24,000)….
…In the six years since she founded Firedoglake … Hamsher has built a well-oiled outrage machine that’s now firmly pointed at the White House and its Democratic allies in Congress….
….Hamsher’s exceptionally good at getting people to put their money where her mouth is. But because Firedoglake is a blog that’s dependent on financial support from PACs, it makes me wonder how much of her outrage is real and how much is driven by the constant need to fire up donors.
I posed that question to David Ferguson, who used to be in charge of Firedoglake’s “Late Night FDL” feature under his pseudonym TRex. He replied, “I would hope that Jane wouldn’t be so cynical as to exploit her readers in any way. I do know that working for her, there was a constant sense of crisis. Everything was always a blazing, four-alarm emergency, and I think some of that is what comes through on her blog. I don’t know whether that’s something she’s working for effect or if that’s just the way she is. Some of her alliances over the last year have genuinely surprised me, though, particularly with regard to the flap over the health care bill.”
Full post here
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HistoryByDay (March 2010)
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WeeSeeYou
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Osborneink: …. Jane Hamsher is quite obviously accepting money from BP. Why is that important? Because according to Hamsher, anyone who takes money from the oil company is guilty of selling out:
“Carbon cap and trade was a scheme cooked up by BP and Enron lobbyists in the mid nineties. BP has subsequently dropped millions of dollars into the coffers of green groups to pave the way for it. Obama’s cry to pass Kerry-Lieberman as punishment for BP is not only highly ironic, it’s also illustrative of just how broken our national discourse around environmental issues has become.
Until progressive groups successfully address the challenge of funding themselves independent of the elite individuals and institutions that act as enforcers of a corporate agenda, they will not be able to successfully advocate for progressive causes. Any success they might have will mean that their funding dries up, and they will cease to exist.”
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Link
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ABL (BalloonJuice):
See full post here
ABL’s Balloon Juice post refers to this campaign promoted by ‘figaro’ at FDL:
ABL (Balloon Juice):
The post about “Afro-Americans” needing an “education program” appeared on FDL on May 18 - it’s still there, never removed.
Rooted Cosmopolitan: …..CommonSense Media, a firm that does work for Republicans, is led by Jane Hamsher.
In isolation, I don’t care what Jane Hamsher does for money …. but it’s time for the media to stop lazily presenting her as a representative figure of liberal Democrats, of the Netroots or of ideologically committed progressives. She’s not. She’s someone who leads a firm that Republicans pay to help them defeat Democrats.
….CommonSense Media also does work for entities working against progressive interests and Democratic candidates. At the same time BP was being accused of “greenwashing” their record after the Gulf oil spill, CommonSense media was doing online advertising for BP….
….If the national political media is going to present Jane Hamsher as a one-time Obama supporter who has now concluded that Obama “just isn’t in to her,” fine. But it’s horribly irresponsible and inaccurate for the press to file those stories without noting that she at one time did business with the DNC, and apparently now does business with Republicans seeking to defeat Democrats. She’s not just a disaffected progressive, she’s someone who leads a business that takes money from Republicans to defeat Democrats.
OpenSecrets
White House.gov
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