Posted on 10/15/2007 10:37:36 AM PDT by Richard Poe
MOST HILLARY WATCHERS have had a chance by now to view the controversial YouTube video in which the junior senator from New York brags that she has personally helped flood the Internet with a "network" of leftwing blogs. Her boast raises troubling questions. On a practical level, just how exactly does a U.S. Senator go about exerting her power to stack the blogosphere in her favor?
One obvious method is to buy favorable coverage. Hillary's boast carries a strong implication that she has subsidized bloggers. Regular readers of Poe.com will be reminded of Bloggergate -- a little-known, but ever-burgeoning, scandal which we have followed on this blog since 2003. (1)
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| This document -- an application for a "New Journalist" fellowship from the Center for Independent Media (CIM) -- shows that the Center offers "stipends" to bloggers of up to $18,000 per year. CIM formerly worked from an office owned by Media Matters for America, a Democrat front group which Hillary Clinton admits she helped "start" and "support". To download a copy of the full CIM application form, go here. |
The Bloggergate scandal erupted when the two most prominent leftwing bloggers on the Internet -- Jerome Armstrong of MyDD and DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuñiga -- both admitted to getting cash from Howard Dean's presidential campaign. (2)
The scandal heated up when Republican blogger Michael B. Brodkorb of Minnesota -- assailed by piranha-like swarms of leftist bloggers -- revealed that his tormentors were on the take -- that is, they had been getting generous cash "fellowships" from an outfit called the Center for Independent Media (CIM). At that time -- October 2006 -- CIM was working from an office in Washington, DC owned by the Democrat front group Media Matters for America, Brodkorb discovered. (3)
Curiously, it turns out that the co-founders of CIM, David S. Bennahum and Alexandra Savino, are both Media Matters alumni. Mr. Bennahum helped found Media Matters, serving as one of its original senior fellows. (4) Miss Savino worked for Media Matters as a blogosphere analyst. (5)
Now Bloggergate has spun into overdrive with Hillary Clinton's revelation, from her own lips, that she helped "start" and "support" Media Matters. After all these years, can it be that we have finally identified the source of the Bloggergate money stream? Can it be that leaders of the leftwing blogosphere suck their nourishment directly from the swollen teat of Senator Clinton's pendulous fundraising apparatus?
Here is what Hillary said on the now-infamous YouTube video:
Hillary: I would wish that we had this active and fighting a blogosphere about fifteen years ago, because we have certainly suffered over the last years from a real imbalance in the political world in our country, but we are righting that balance – or lefting that balance – I’m not sure which, and certainly are better prepared and more focused on taking our arguments and making them effective and disseminating them widely and really putting together a network in the blogosphere. In a lot of the new progressive infrastructure, institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress, we’re beginning to match what I had said for years was the advantage of the other side. (6) Read more » Hillary Clinton |
Readers are urged to take special note of the above.
In the above-cited quote, Hillary claims to have "helped start and support" certain institutions tasked with correcting an alleged "imbalance" between rightwing and leftwing media. These institutions form a part of what Hillary calls "a new progressive infrastructure". According to Hillary, the "infrastructure" she "helped" build has given rise to a leftwing "network in the blogosphere" capable of "matching" the "advantage of the other side". In this regard, she names two institutions specifically; Media Matters for America and the Center for American Progress.
My esteemed coauthor David Horowitz and I described the peculiar relationship between these two groups in our book The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party. Of the Center for American Progress, we wrote:
by David Horowitz and Richard Poe pages 187-189 Robert Dreyfuss reported in the 1 March 2004 edition of the Nation, "The idea for the Center began with discussions in 2002 between [Morton] Halperin and George Soros, the billionaire investor... Halperin, who heads the office of Soros' Open Society Institute, brought [John] Podesta into the discussion..." (7) Soros and Halperin then recruited Harold Ickes -- chief fundraiser and former deputy chief of staff for the Clinton White House -- to help organize the Center. It was launched on 7 July 2003... Hillary subsequently told the Nation's Dreyfuss, "We've had the challenge of filling a void on our side of the ledger for a long time, while the other side created an infrastructure that has come to dominate political discourse. The Center is a welcome effort fill that void."... Persistent press leaks confirm that Hillary calls the shots at the Center -- not its director, John Podesta. "It's the official Hillary Clinton think tank", an inside source confirmed. (8) ... Dreyfuss notes the abundance of Clintonites on the Center's staff... "In looking at Podesta's center," Dreyfuss muses, "there's no escaping the imprint of the Clintons. It's not completely wrong to see it as a shadow government, a kind of Clinton White-House-in-exile -- or a White House staff in readiness for President Hillary Clinton." (9) (10) |
In 2004, the Center for American Progress gave birth to a new organization called Media Matters for America. David Horowitz and I wrote the following in The Shadow Party:
| Excerpted from The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party by David Horowitz and Richard Poe pages 189-191 Another of the Center's missions is to carry out "rapid response" to what it calls conservative "attacks" in the media. ... The Center for American Progress immediately helped launch a fraternal project, Media Matters for America, better known for its website MediaMatters.org. ... [President and CEO David] Brock is a former conservative journalist who defected to the left amidst an outpouring of dramatic public confessions that he had built his career on lies, writing political hit pieces filled with flimsy evidence. Whatever Brock lacks in credibility, he more than makes up for in currying influence. Brock told the New York Times that he conferred with Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Tom Daschle and former Vice President Al Gore before launching the website. The New York Times generously provided a 1,041-word feature article to announce Brock's grand opening in May 2004: "Mr. Brock's project was developed with help from the newly formed Center for American Progress... Podesta has loaned office space in the past to Mr. Brock and introduced him to potential donors". Brock received $2 million for the start-up. His donors include friend-of-Hillary Susie Tompkins Buell, co-founder of the fashion company Esprit; Leo Hindery Jr., former CEO of the scandal-ridden Global Crossing; and San Francisco philanthropist James C. Hormel... (11) One of Brock's first projects was to exert pressure on Congress and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to ban Rush Limbaugh from American Forces Radio and Television Service -- thus depriving the troops in Iraq of one of the few radio programs they are allowed to hear which wholeheartedly supports them and the cause for which they fight. (12) |
Much like a yeast colony, in which each bud of yeast sprouts new buds, which in turn sprout buds of their own, the Center for American Progress spawned Media Matters, which has now begun spawning offshoots of its own. One of these offshoots is the Center for Independent Media (CIM). Launched in April 2006, it initially worked from an office owned by Media Matters at 1625 Massachusetts Avenue NW, 3rd Floor, Washington DC.
Through a system of media "fellowships", CIM recruits, trains, directs and finances a veritable army of leftwing bloggers, all subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer, thanks to the Center's 501(c)(3) tax-free status.
| Center for independent Media (CIM) New Journalist Fellowship Program |
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| Official CIM Blog | List of Bloggers | Launched | |
| Colorado Confidential | Colorado bloggers | Domain Registered 06.13.06 First Post 06.29.06 |
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| Minnesota Monitor | Minnesota Bloggers | Domain Registered 08.09.06 First Post 08.21.06 |
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| Iowa Independent | Iowa Bloggers | Domain Registered 05.11.06 First Post 04.29.07 |
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| Michigan Messenger | Michigan Bloggers | Domain Registered 09.05.07 First Post 09.10.07 |
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| As the chart above shows, the Center for Independent Media has launched four group blogs at this writing, all located in key battleground states where Democrats and Republicans are running neck and neck, to wit: Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan. Look for more CIM blogs to pop up in Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Arkansas, Virginia and Florida. Go here for a map of battleground states anticipated for the 2008 election cycle. (13) |
According to the Center’s fellowship application, CIM offers bloggers a three-month, renewable fellowship which includes such perks as “a stipend of $4500 to be paid over 3 months”, “editorial mentorship from experts in the field of blogging and/or journalism”, access to expensive databases such as LexisNexis, as well as free legal advice, training and technical support. (14)
Because CIM fellowships expire after three months, CIM "fellows" are always on the hot seat. If CIM is satisfied with the blogger's performance, it will renew his fellowship. Otherwise, it will not. Plainly, CIM bloggers have much to gain if they toe the party line -- and much to lose if they fail to satisfy their benefactors.
CIM does not publish a full list of its bloggers. We can only speculate on their number. However, the CIM website does provide a "select" list of some of its more prominent "fellows". These are shown in the chart below. (15)
by Richard Lawrence Poe
October 11, 2007 05:08 PM ET
Last updated October 15, 2007
1. Richard Lawrence Poe, "Bloggers Take Democrat Bribes", Richardpoe.com, 10 October 2003, 11:55 AM ET
Richard Lawrence Poe, "BLOGGERGATE: Unfolding Scandal or False Alarm?", RichardPoe.com, 12 October 2003, 01:58 PM ET
Richard Lawrence Poe, "BLOGGERGATE: Pro-Dean Bloggers Get Cash", RichardPoe.com, 14 January 2005, 10:56 AM ET
Richard Lawrence Poe, "The Kossacks: Growing Force on the Left", MoonbatCentral.com, 2 March 2005, 10:35 AM ET
Richard Lawrence Poe, "Red Blogs Rising", MoonbatCentral.com, 2 March 2005
Richard Lawrence Poe, "Bloggergate: Media 'Watchdog' Group Implicated in Blogger Payoffs", Poe.com, 10 October 2006, 06:44 AM ET
William M. Bulkeley and James Bandler, "Dean Campaign Made Payments To Two Bloggers", The Wall Street Journal, 14 January 2005
3. Michael B. Brodkorb, "MDE Exclusive: Minnesota Monitor & Center For Independent Media Exposed", Minnesota Democrats Exposed, 2 October 2006
4. David S. Bennahum, "About Me", bennahum.com, 30 October 2004, retrieved 14 October 2007
5. "Alexandra Savino", YearlyKosConvention.org, retrieved 14 October 2007
6. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Speech to YearlyKos Convention 2007, Chicago, IL, 4 August 2007
7. Robert Dreyfuss, “An Idea Factory for the Democrats,” The Nation, 1 March 2004, 18
8. Christian Bourge, “Liberal Think Tank Debuts,” United Press International, July 7, 2003
9. Dreyfuss, The Nation, 1 March 2004, 18
10. David Horowitz and Richard Poe, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2006), 187-189
11. Jim Rutenberg, "New Internet Site Turns Critical Eyes and Ears to the Right", New York Times, 3 May 2004
12. Horowitz and Poe, The Shadow Party, 189-191
13. "Our Sites", NewJournalist.org, Center for Independent Media, retrieved 11 October 2007
14. "New Journalist Fellowship Application", New Journalist Pilot Program, The Center for Independent Media, application deadline: 30 July 2006
15. "Fellows", NewJournalist.org, Center for Independent Media, retrieved 11 October 2007
Mort Halperin
Halperin served in the federal government in the Clinton, Nixon, and Johnson administrations, most recently from December 1998 to January 2001 as Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State. In the Clinton administration, he was also Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy at the National Security Council, a consultant to the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and was nominated by the president for the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Democracy and Peacekeeping.
Halperin worked for many years for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Mark Halperin's father, Morton Halperin, is noted for being a "far left civil libertarian who made his mark during the Cold War attempting to undermine America's key national security agencies, including the CIA, the FBI and the Pentagon." [6]. Morton Halperin is also a Member of the Board of Directors of George Soros's Open Society Policy Center and Executive Director, Open Society Policy Center.
Mark E. Halperin (born January 11, 1965), is a political analyst for Time magazine, Time.com and ABC News. He is also an editor at large for Time.
In 1997, he was named the Political Director for ABC News. As director, Halperin appeared frequently as a correspondent and political analyst for ABC News television and radio programs. He also the founded and edited The Note, which appears daily on ABCNews.com
In March 2007, Halperin stepped down from Political Director to become a political analyst for ABC News.
Morton H. Halperin is the Director of U.S. Advocacy for the Open Society Institute. Halperin oversees all policy advocacy on U.S. and international issues, including promotion of human rights and support for open societies abroad.
Halperin also serves as Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is Chairman of the Board of the Democracy Coalition Project. He is also the Chairman of the Board of the Health Privacy Project at Georgetown University. He serves on the boards of DATA and The Constitution Project, and is the chair of the Advisory Board of the Center for National Security Studies.
Halperin also has a long record as a Washington advocate on national and international issues. He spent many years at the American Civil Liberties Union, serving as the Director of the Washington Office from 1984 to 1992, where he was responsible for the national legislative program as well as the activities of the ACLU Foundation based in the Washington Office. Halperin also served as the Director of the Center for National Security Studies from 1975 to 1992, where he focused on issues affecting both civil liberties and national security.
And now ABC News has left in place its Political Director Mark Halperin. ABC has done this despite the network’s acknowledgement that Halperin wrote a memo that to many seems to direct ABC reporters, anchors and producers to slant its coverage by downplaying the misstatements of Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry and by viewing negatively any misstatements by Republican candidate Bush.
Halperin’s directive reached ABC people on October 8, the very day that ABC “Good Morning America” co-host Charlie Gibson would be selecting questions for and moderating the second presidential debate between Bush and Kerry. Did Halperin intend to influence Gibson’s decisions in this debate?
Who is Mark Halperin, and does his memo reflect leftwing bias in his shaping of the news at ABC? To find answers to these questions, we need to consider the details of this memo-gate controversy in the light of Halperin’s past and of the famous radical left-wing father who shaped his political values. As we shall discover, Halperin has veered Left and crossed the line of ethical journalism many times.
Mark Halperin “has been the Political Director of ABC News since 1997 and has covered politics and campaigns through four election cycles,” reads one of his 2004 biographies posted by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). “As Political Director, Halperin is responsible for the planning and editorial content of all political news on the network.”
“Halperin manages the editorial coverage of politics throughout the ABC News universe,” says another official ABC biography, “and contributes frequently to ABC News broadcasts.”
Mark Halperin weeks before the 2004 presidential election issued his October 8 internal memo to the staff of ABC News that, when it became public, stirred controversy. Critics charged that Halperin was directing ABC reporters to tilt their coverage – telling them, in effect, to ignore or minimize misstatements by Democrat Senator John F. Kerry but to attack any misstatements by Republican President George W. Bush.
Halperin’s memo claimed that the Bush campaign was trying “to get away with as much as possible….” No comparable criticism was made of Democratic candidate Kerry.
“We have a responsibility,” Halperin, then 39, continued, “to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn’t mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally’ accountable when the facts don’t warrant that.
“I’m sure many of you have this week felt the stepped up Bush efforts to complain about our coverage. This is all part of their efforts to get away with as much as possible with the stepped up, renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions.
“It’s up to Kerry to defend himself, of course,” wrote Halperin. “But as one of the few news organizations with the skill and strength to help voters evaluate what the candidates are saying to serve the public interest. Now is the time for all of us to step up and do that right.”
Mark Halperin’s idea of what is right may be what is Left. He was born in 1965 in Bethesda, Maryland, the red-diaper baby of hard-Left-connected controversial foreign policy specialist Morton Halperin. This fact reveals an entire Left-spin universe in which Mark grew up exposed to his father’s comrades and radical ideas.
Morton Halperin today is Senior Vice President of the left-wing Center for American Progress (CAP) and Director of the Open Society Policy Center established by eccentric billionaire international financier George Soros.
In 1966, a year after his son Mark was born, Halperin during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged that the United States should diplomatically recognize the Communist People’s Republic of China and seek its admission to the United Nations.
After leaving government, Halperin was feted and embraced by many “progressive” groups that promoted similar views, such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
In February 1993, President Bill Clinton’s administration announced the appointment of Morton Halperin to the new position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Democracy and Peacekeeping. Halperin withdrew his name from consideration in January 1994, his nomination stalled by both Republican and Democrat U.S. Senators who refused to consent to so radical a nominee.
Halperin was for many reasons too controversial to win Senate confirmation. He had advocated unilateral nuclear disarmament of the United States, publication of most U.S. military secrets, and an end of all clandestine activities by the U.S. against the Soviet Union and its colony in Communist Cuba.
Morton Halperin during the mid-1970s befriended Philip Agee, a former-CIA-agent-turned-Communist who publicly identified hundreds of purported American Central Intelligence Agency agents. At least one of these agents, Athens station chief Richard Welch, was murdered shortly thereafter. Halperin flew to Europe to help Agee find safe haven after Great Britain expelled him. In the U.S., Halperin opposed legislation to punish the outing of U.S. undercover agents as Agee had done. Halperin has described the CIA as “the subverter of everybody else’s freedom.”
Halperin, as Director of the Washington, D.C. office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in this era also defended the right of The Progressive magazine to publish secret details it had obtained of how to make an atomic bomb.
In 1976, Halperin accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of “murdering” Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. In 1977 Halperin joined with the National Lawyers Guild to form a legal resources center to oppose “police spying” and became chairman of the Campaign to Stop Government Spying (CSGS).
In 1998, Halperin became director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department. During his tenure 15 State Department laptop computers containing highly classified intelligence information disappeared, one of them checked out to Halperin’s office. Others were punished for this serious security breach, but Halperin was not.
Morton Halperin in February 2002 became Director of the Open Society Policy Center and has worked closely ever since with its creator, eccentric billionaire international financier George Soros, who committed tens of millions of dollars in 2004 to a variety of efforts to defeat President Bush. One of these Soros-funded political efforts is the Center for American Progress (CAP), launched in summer 2003, one of the “Seven Sisters” pillars of the left’s “Shadow Government.”
CAP is also known as “the official Hillary Clinton think tank,” described by Horowitz and Poe as “a platform designed to highlight Hillary’s policies and to enhance her prestige as a potential presidential candidate.”
Lol, you’ve got some ‘interesting things’ in there!
BTTT
bttt
that wasn’t bad.. who made that?
Nice to know that ABC is feeding us Soros’s crap, eh? I’d say something about the Halperins, but I don’t want to be banned for advocating certain illegal acts.
Bookmark
( My nephew took a 'media' (matters?) class at his university; the book used was written by David Brock- (President and CEO of Media Matters for America - and educational focus was 'Right-wing radio' and Rush. . .and how both contribute to the corruption of Democracy - as per Brock's book. His brain being trained to think as well, that the Fairness Doctrine was simply that; and that Rush and the lie were synonomous.
(Did the class ever listen to this enemy - so as to understand the nature of the evil they were learning about? Of course, and 'for sure' not.)
Perhaps the evil hands of Soros and Hillary may be reaching even deeper into the next generation; as they attempt to program America's future. Am wondering now as well; if there is a payback for the Professors who fashion their courses along 'Media Matters' agenda. . .
Excellent Phil.
Thanks very much for the ping, your work, the links. BTTT!
BTTT
Thanks for posting. BTTT!
BUMP!!!
bloggergate ping for later reference
{ { { {{(( C L A N G ))}} } } }
let’s see Herself un-ring the bell on this one
. . . btw , .. I wonder how Normie Hsu is feeling
LOL! ...Izzat the SAME company that makes all those new ‘touch-screen’ voting machines...??
Thank you for the ping, it is really interesting to see what Hillary really thinks when she thinks she is only speaking to her loyal supporters, she admits that she is a liberal, thanks the crowd for pulling off the new progressive movement, obviously, they were previouly given marching orders to rename their socialist movement progressive. And also, it is interesting to see how she considers normal, conservative Americans to be her enemies.
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