People on the left are constantly asking Andrew Breitbart who funds his “operation.”  It’s grown to become rather amusing, actually.  For those of us who are bloggers on The Bigs, we know the truth, we see how things operate. We know there’s no giant conservative-leaning lump of cash greasing this machine.  If that were the case, I for one think Andrew would probably be home with his family even more, rather than traveling around, worrying about advertising or other ways of self-funding this little “hobby” of his, as the left often like to refer to it.

But let’s just look for one moment at where some of that line of thinking comes from on the other side.  I’ve written previously about the birth of Media Matters as a spawn of Rob Stein’s Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix road show, from which the Democracy Alliance was born.  It’s through this organization from which much of the organization’s funding had come; in recent years, more has been spread out across other progressive organizations, but the funders often remain the same names in most cases.  For instance, The Tides Foundation gave Media Matters and their Action Network over $175,000 just last year.  In earlier years, groups like Montclair, New Jersey-based (hometown of Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert) Schumann Center for Media & Democracy gave the organization $500,000.

The donors’ list is vast and diverse, and we plan to cover that in detail in the future.  So I’ll focus in on one set of donors to Media Matters, which is the Labor Unions.  More specifically, in light of some recent posts regarding the Kenneth Gladney incident, I thought it appropriate to revisit donations made to Media Matters specifically by the Service Employees International Union.

When you look at the timeline of events and the media calendar in general leading up to the Gladney incident last August, it’s difficult not to conclude that there was collaboration amongst White House staff, components of Big Labor, and certain liberal media outlets.  However, we know that all will continue to deny it.

Further, just as the flurry of media activity finally starts to wind down a bit around October last year, this is when SEIU makes three separate donations to Media Matters totaling $50,000, under the classification of “Communications”, according to the SEIU LM-2 report. (In reviewing other LM-2s for several previous years, this appears at least to be the first time that SEIU has donated to Media Matters, and there does not seem to have been another donation recorded since these.)

This is the type of funding that I would question in return to Media Matters.  With their membership being so low and their unfunded pension expenses so high, can the SEIU really afford to be randomly donating funds to an organization like Media Matters?  Perhaps SEIU purchased advertising on Media Matters’ website, but then I’d think it would be categorized as such, as others ad expenses in the LM-2 were.  If not advertising, if not random donations,  then what’s the reason for SEIU having donated these funds?  One could logically conclude that Media Matters performed a service in return.  Only they can answer that.

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In Part 1 of this series we detailed the events leading up to the assault on Kenneth Gladney on August 6^th and revealed the document written by Margarida Jorge at Health Care for American Now (HCAN) a front group funded by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which laid a blueprint for the unions to follow that evening at Rep. Russ Carnahan’s town hall meeting.  Yesterday, in Part 2, we exposed a second town hall meeting that occurred the same night in Tampa Bay, FL with Rep. Kathy Castor that followed the same structure and had very similar results.  We also detailed the relationships of key decision makers at HCAN, Rep. Carnahan’s office and the White House and showed how they were all inter-related at SEIU, the Obama for America campaign and the two accused of assaulting Kenneth Gladney that evening.

Margarida Jorge

On the evening of August 6^th hundreds of citizens were shut out of the meeting and not allowed to question their elected official while hundreds of SEIU members were ushered in a side entrance to sit in reserved seats in the front of the hall.  This followed precisely the instructions penned by Margarida Jorge of HCAN.

• We need to stack our folks in the front to create a wall around the Member…
• Get to your location early and make sure you set up the venue in a way that ensures that the attendees you want are at the front and that any protesters who come are sequestered as far as possible from the stage.
• Make sure that you assign marshals to take care of moving the crowd, keeping people organized and orderly, and acting as security

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On August 6th Kenneth Gladney attended the Russ Carnahan town hall meeting in south St. Louis County. Kenneth was there to make some money selling freedom flags and buttons. After the meeting Kenneth was assaulted, beaten and stomped by angry SEIU thugs who were upset that a black man would be selling anti-Obama merchandise. Gladney was taken to the hospital following the attack.

Ken Gladney is pictured here after his public beating by SEIU thugs. Kenneth Gladney attended this protest against SEIU violence in August in St. Louis. He was beaten, kicked and called racist names by Russ Carnahan’s SEIU supporters after the town hall meeting earlier that week. St. Louis County officials have yet to press charges.

It’s been over 3 months and still St. Louis county officials have not met with Kenneth Gladney to discuss the case nor have they press charges against the SEIU thugs who beat him.

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