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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I know a little something about coffins.  And I know when I’m being lied to.

An email arrived in my inbox this afternoon from Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s baby-brother, Congressman Russ Carnahan (D-Missouri).  In this email, Carnahan pledges to not be intimidated by Coffingate, and then asks me for money.  This email may be the most despicable yet of the campaign season.  After a brutal 48 hours of press retractions about an incident regarding a coffin placed near his house, Carnahan is attempting to hustle money for intimidation that did not occur.

Carnahan provides a link to a piece in Politico – the very piece that was suggested to Politico reporter Jake Sherman by a Carnahan spokesperson, (and subsequently corrected).  Here is some text from his email.

They’ve tried every dirty trick in the book to block critical reforms that will stop insurance companies from rejecting children with preexisting conditions or denying care to those who are sick. Try as they may, we will not be intimidated.
Help me send a message that threats and extreme tactics will not work. Please contribute $100, $50 or even $25 right now to help me fight back against those who will stop at nothing to block health care reform for Missouri families….

It must be hard to get good help these days.  At the center of the controversy is Sara Howard, Congressman Carnahan’s spokesperson for his re-election campaign.  Howard comes from SEIU, where she spent a number of years learning the ins and outs of labor-press relations.

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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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Yesterday we discussed the events leading up to the August 6^th health care town hall meeting featuring Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO).  The event was hosted by Health Care For American Now (HCAN) and Organizing for America (OFA), the former a front group for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the latter an off-shoot of the Obama Campaign now run by the Democratic National Committee (DNC).  We revealed a four page document released by HCAN two days before the August 6^th town hall meeting.  In that document, guidelines are revealed for members of HCAN (union members) on how best to stifle the protestations of ObamaCare.

The meetings hosted by HCAN (like the one on August 6^th in St. Louis) were set up using these rules.  Americans showed up at these meetings thinking that it would be an opportunity to address their elected representatives and talk to them about the single most important piece of legislation our congress has proposed in decades.  Instead, they were pushed to the back of the room and shouted down by the well-trained SEIU members.  Eventually, an American citizen who was distributing “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and buttons was assaulted by a handful of the SEIU members.  His name is Kenneth Gladney.

Let’s look at that memo and how it matches the events of August 6^th: (more…)

We’ve just started to lay the groundwork on the Kenneth Gladney story and the shameful failure of the county prosecutor Bob McCullough to pursue criminal prosecution of SEIU assailants.  Left wing blogs, mainstream newspapers, and of course SEIU, having concluded a smear the messenger campaign, have now resorted to a blackout strategy.  The first rule of union beatings is you do not talk about union beatings.

With the healthcare bill having just passed the house, this story couldn’t have come at a worse time for Democrats.  Falling poll numbers for congressional Democrats and the President, waning support for the Pelosi/Reid bills, and renewed, often heated conflict between the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic party gives a very small window to pass this bill. Discovering that the story of union members attacking a man outside a Townhall was covered up and ignored by politicians, unions, local papers and the mainstream media is a live grenade rolled into the middle of the healthcare debate.  There is no hiding from the scandal if Gladney’s story comes out.  Careers and campaigns will be ruined in St Louis.  Conservatives will have a convenient club with which to beat the St Louis Post Dispatch for their shameful coverage, and the strong ties of HCAN’s Missouri members to the Obama administration will continue to taint all of the enablers.

But this isn’t just about Kenneth Gladney.  Let’s set aside that travesty of justice and focus on the second assault that night.  After the police arrive, an OFA volunteer by the name of Cheryl Johner struck a Tea Party activist in the face.  A police officer saw the assault, and immediately arrested Ms. Johner.  Furthermore, the entire event was recorded on video, as the Tea Party Activist had her camera on the entire time.  We see Johner approach the camera, punch the girl in the face, and then we immediately see Johner cuffed and taken away.  This is the relevant portion of the video.

There is no doubt what happened.

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