Michele Bachmann's career isn't entirely about nutty conspiracy theories (that's only about half of it.) Part of her appeal to conservatives in her district and around the nation is: the "titanium spine" she claims to have, when it comes to standing up to liberalism.
The Huffington Post did something very mean. It filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to find out how much deficit Bachmann tried to wring out of federal taxpayers.
As you read below, bear in mind: at the same time that she was telling conservative, Republican and tea party audiences that the US was broke, that she was renouncing earmarks, that we were "taxed enough already," and railing against the Obama stimulus...
...she was practicing Dem liberal politics and econmics, hunting that taxpayer funded pork:
A Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Huffington Post with three separate federal agencies reveals that on at least 16 separate occasions, Bachmann petitioned the federal government for direct financial help or aid. A large chunk of those requests were for funds set aside through President Obama's stimulus program, which Bachmann once labeled "fantasy economics." Bachmann made two more of those requests to the Environmental Protection Agency, an institution that she has suggested she would eliminate if she were in the White House.
Taken as a whole, the letters underscore what Bachmann's critics describe as a glaring distance between her campaign oratory and her actual conduct as a lawmaker...
Yeah. But they won't read this story in the Minnesota daily newspapers or get it via Minnesota news broadcasting. (They still insist on telling readers that Bachmann's a conservative on the economy--despite all evidence to the contrary.)
What liberal spending did Bachmann support? Well, it's the liberal spending that she benefits from personally, and the Obama stimulus money she said she would ruin the economy. The details:
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Here's a little of the stuff cited in the HuffPo piece.
Personally, Bachmann relied on a federal subsidized home loan. (That helped her family out a lot. Bachmann's on video explaining that she and her husband got their financial start flipping homes for sale. Hard to do, unless you rely on the federal government to help you buy your own home--which the Bachmanns did.) Then there's her husband's Christian counseling clinics. They take money from Medicaid payments.
And then there's the liberal spending by government:
When President Obama crafted a $787 billion stimulus package that included historic investments in state aid, infrastructure projects, health care and education reforms as well as a large swath of tax breaks, Bachmann led a chorus of conservatives in decrying the policy.
That's right. And the HuffPo reports that less than three weeks after denouncing the stimulus, she was seeking "her piece of the pie."
Bachmann sought federal funding for the Big Lake Rail Park, claiming it would "enhance economic development and job opportunities in this rural Minnesota community." (That's liberal economics, Michele.) In all, the HuffPo piece identifies sixteen instances of Bachmann engaging in liberal deficit spending attempts to create jobs and economic markets in her district. She even applied to the EPA for federal taxpayer dollars.
And then of course there's what she's been calling her "signature achievement": obtaining federal taxpayer deficit dollars for the new bridge in Stillwater.
And this seem incredible, but in one instance the queen of the Tea Party actually praised and sought federal spending on actual pork. She wrote to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and "praising him for putting money into the nation's beleaguered pork industry and encouraging him to help "stabilize prices through direct government purchasing."
Five days later, she was chastising the concept of government spending in public, saying that the president's efforts to stem the fallout of the recession amounted to a charade. "We hear about fantasy football games. This is fantasy economics," Bachmann said.
Of course it's not "fantasy economics." Michele Bachmann knows that; she's lying again. Michele knows that liberal spending during a recession is a necessity, not a "fantasy." That's why she seeks the pork even as she denounces it. (Where's Grover Norquist and Taxpayers' League when you need them? Why aren't
they denouncing Michele for this?)
The fact is: this hypocrisy (and deceit of her supporters) won't hurt Michele much. Her addiction to liberal deficit spending fall under the "It's Okay If You're a Republican" category.
Another reason it won't hurt her re-election prospects is: the biggest names in Minnesota news have Michele down as a "fiscal conservative" (because that's what she tells them she is.)
And thus: the biggest names in the Minnesota news media are damned if they're going to report the fact that she isn't a fiscal conservative. They've been selling that the myth to the public for years--so dammit, they're going to keep selling that myth to the public.
ACTION LINK: Donate to Bachmann's opponent, Jim Graves. The candidate who's not a lying nut who gets other lying nuts into Congress.
https://secure.actblue.com/...
LINK:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...