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Before attacking Karl Bremer, be sure to check out Bachmann's own financial disclosure forms (conveniently linked to in the article) which tend to back up every single claim he makes. There are a ton of alternate sources out there reporting on this, but I chose this piece because it is thorough yet concise, well referenced and very much to the point.
By Karl Bremer
Michele Bachmann kicked off her presidential campaign in the farm state of Iowa by lying about the federal farm subsidies she's profited from on her family's farm.
When asked about her apparent hypocrisy in profiting from government subsidies while at the same time campaigning against them and calling them "outrageous pork," Bachmann told Chris Wallace on Fox News that she and her husband had "never gotten a penny of money from the farm."
Either Bachmann lied to a national TV audience when she said that, or she's been filing false federal financial disclosure forms with Congress since 2007.
Bachmann has claimed between $32,503 and $105,000 in income from the Bachmann Farm Family Limited Partnership since 2007, according to her congressional financial disclosure forms for 2007, 2009 and 2010. She still has not reported her 2008 income from the farm on her disclosure form from that year—an apparent violation of congressional reporting requirements. And as in years past, Bachmann hasn't bothered to file her financial disclosure form for 2011 and has been granted an extension.
The Bachmann Farm Family Partnership comprises 951 acres with at least one home on 38 parcels in Independence, WI, with a total assessed value of $664,950. Michele and Marcus Bachmann are partners in the farm partnership, which was established April 12, 2001, with an ownership share valued at between $100,001 and $250,000. Its corporate records on file with the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions still list Paul Bachmann of Independence, WI, as the partnership’s general partner and registered agent, even though Paul Bachmann (Marcus Bachmann's father) has been dead since May 2009.
The Bachmann Family farm has collected a total of $154,755 in federal farm subsidies since the partnership was formed in 2001, most of it in corn and dairy subsidies. Paul Bachmann collected a total of $259,332 in federal farm subsidies from 1995-2009. However, it’s not known whether Michele and Marcus were involved in the farm prior to the establishment of the family partnership in 2001.
I broke the Bachmann farm subsidies story in 2007 here, and it's been re-reported by numerous news organizations over the years, including the Los Angeles Times last week. But it hasn't been until recently that Bachmann has outright lied about having profited from the very farm subsidies she rails against.
Will the media let Bachmann get away with lying about profiting from farm subsidies? Or will they stay focused on Chris Wallace asking Bachmann if she's a "flake?" I'll give you one guess.
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Today's official announcement by Republican Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann that she is running for the GOP nomination for President could spawn a whole new round of frenzied attacks by the liberal media on the Tea Party favorite.
A review of the MRC's archives shows a particular disdain for Bachmann coming from the likes of MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who once accused her of being a "zombie," even going as far to ask her on live Election Night coverage if she "hypnotized?"
Not to be outdone, Matthews's former colleague Keith Olbermann claimed Bachmann's rise to Tea Party prominence was because she was one of the "evolutionary regressives" that appealed to, as actress Janeane Garafolo, put it, "the white power movement" of "tea***" and "9-12ers." (***edited by poster due to board rules)
The following is a collection of some of the left-wing media's most obnoxious quotes about the congresswoman:
Chris Matthews: "Congresswoman Bachmann, are you hypnotized tonight? Has someone hypnotized you? Because no matter what I ask you, you give the same answer. Are you hypnotized? Has someone put you under a trance tonight? That you give me the same answer no matter what question I put to you?"
Rep. Michele Bachmann: "I think the American people are the ones that are finally speaking tonight. We're coming out of our trance....I think people are thrilled tonight. I imagine that thrill is probably maybe quite not so tingly on your leg anymore."
-From MSNBC's election night coverage, November 2, 2010
MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "Let's listen to Michele Bachmann, your new boss. By the way she may be a zombie answering to somebody out there — Boris Karloff, I don't know who's giving her orders — but here she is on the debt ceiling. Let's listen to her."
Clip of Michele Bachmann: "I am not in favor of raising the debt ceiling. As a matter of fact, I have a petition that I'm urging people to sign at MichelePAC.com to urge their member of Congress not to raise the debt ceiling."
Matthews: "Do you hear that? Who does she get her orders from?"
-Matthews to GOP strategist Todd Harris on Hardball, January 4, 2011
And then there's Michele Bachmann. I have said before that she has zombie-like qualities. I have never -- I think she's on hypnosis, but it turns out she just doesn't know anything. What she did this weekend was say, basically, that we did not have slavery after the days of the Founding Fathers because they were so great, they managed somehow that we didn't notice to get rid of slavery.
This is an incredible statement. The American people lost 600,000 lives in the Civil War, the worst catastrophe in our history, because of slavery continuing well past the mid-point of the 19th century. And this person - and you have to use the word "balloon head" -- said that we had slavery eradicated in the days of the Founding Fathers. I have never heard anything -- people like that should not be in politics. They didn't go to first grade in history. What is this person doing on the national stage? Go home to grade school. Start around 3rd, and you might be able to catch up with the class. Anyway, she's going out tonight as the spokesperson for the Tea Partiers. They must be really desperate.
-Matthews on Hardball, January 25, 2011
"The Republican strategy was 'Don't show your ugly faces tonight.' Today they kept all the crazies — all the crazies were in the closet....Michele Bachmann was not allowed to show up today. Joe Wilson from South Carolina was not there in evidence....[After clip of Republican participants using similar language] Look at these terms! ‘Start over,' 'clean sheet of paper,' ''scrap the bill,' 'step by step,' repeated like robotics....This is what it must be like at those North Korean assembly meetings where they all get together before the Dear Leader."
-Matthews discussing GOP's health care summit with Barack Obama on Hardball, February 25, 2010
"It's obvious to anybody who has eyes in this country that tea*** (edited by poster due to board rules), the 9-12ers, these separatist groups that pretend that it's about policy — they are clearly white-identity movements. They're clearly white power movements. What they don't like about the President is that he's black....These people, who are also being led by the Glenn Becks, the Michelle Bachmans, the Rush Limbows [presumably Limbaugh], whomever, they are no different than any other white identity movement that's part of our history."
-Left-wing activist and actress Janeane Garofalo on HBO's Real Time, October 2, 2009
"If racism is not the whole of the Tea Party, it is in its heart, along with blind hatred, a total disinterest in the welfare of others, and a full-flowered, self-rationalizing refusal to accept the outcomes of elections, or the reality of democracy, or the narrowness of their minds and the equal narrowness of their public support. On Saturday, that support came from evolutionary regressives like Michele Bachmann and Jon Voight. On a daily basis that support comes from the racists and homophobes of radio and television: the Michael Savages and the Rush Limbaughs."
-MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Countdown, March 22, 2010
"They're attractive, especially to the Republican Party, which is not known as a party that really does well with the opposite sex. Usually they're doughy white men, and I think they look on Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, as you know, MILFs. And I agree — they're morons I'd like to forget."
-HBO's Bill Maher on MSNBC's Hardball, April 14, 2010
"You feel very strongly that government should be limited to what it is allowed to do in the Constitution. Now, the fact is, when we have to change things in society, government has had to provide incentives to capital to move into certain areas. Think about energy, think about the environment. Do you really believe that the federal government should offer no incentives, should undertake no planning with anything that doesn't have to do with powers granted to them in the Constitution?"