Tag: Media Matters for America

David Brock’s Money Laundering Exposed

/ CRC Staff / Leave a comment
David Brock, founder of Correct the Record, speaks at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, Ark., Tuesday, March 25, 2014. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)

A report came out today detailing the alleged money laundering scheme run by David Brock, the once-conservative journalist turned political operative for the Clintons.

As the report on The Citizens Audit explains:

David Brock has 7 non-profits, 3 Super PACs, one 527-committee, one LLC, one joint fundraising committee, and one unregistered solicitor crammed into his office in Washington DC.

Uncovered records expose a constant flow of money between these organizations.

The Bonner Group, his professional solicitor, works off a commission.  Every time money gets passed around, Bonner receives a 12.5% cut.

It appears that Brock has been passing around donations quite a bit, giving The Bonner Group a handout each time.

In 2014, Media Matters for America raised $10,021,188.

The Bonner Group was credited for raising these funds.  Media Matters paid them a $1,147,882 commission.

That same year, Media Matters gave a $930,000 cash grant to David Brock’s Franklin Education Forum, an organization that shares office space with Media Matters.

In 2014, the Franklin Education Forum reported $994,000 in total contributions.  93.6% of that total came from Media Matters!

Surprisingly, though, the Franklin Education Forum gave full credit to Bonner for raising that money.  They paid the fundraiser a $124,250 commission in 2014!

As all of these groups exist within Brock’s DC office, it would be difficult for him to claim he had no idea this was going on. The report continues:

Furthermore, the New York Times reports that David Brock shares a summer rental in the Hamptons with Mary Pat Bonner, the President of the Bonner Group!

How interesting.

Read the full report here.

For more information on David Brock, read Matthew Vadum’s August article or the December 2014 Organization Trends.

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Misgendering Bradley, errrrr, I mean, Chelsea, Manning

/ Matthew Vadum
mmfa_sept142016

Sometimes the items posted by the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America are too hilarious to ignore.

This is the case with at item posted yesterday by “researcher” Rachel Percelay titled, “Fox News Is In Its Third Year Of Misgendering And Mocking Chelsea Manning[.]”

What is this verb misgender? According to the definition that pops up on Google, to misgender is to

refer to (someone, especially a transgender person) using a word, especially a pronoun or form of address, that does not correctly reflect the gender with which they identify. “various media outlets have continued to misgender her”

So let’s play along with this nonsense for a moment.

This invented verb, to misgender, allows an individual to identify with a gender that does not necessarily correspond to that person’s sex at birth. Really, gender and sex are synonymous terms, but the wacky leftists in academia insist gender is different from sex. They have invented this thing they call gender (and gender roles) in order to blur the lines between the sexes. They argue, against overwhelming evidence, that masculinity and femininity are made-up constructs that we need to get beyond in order to move forward as a society.

So when a person chooses to identify with a specific gender (according to Facebook there were 58 genders two years ago — more must have been invented since then) no one is allowed to disagree. If you disagree, you’re a bigot or a terrible, insensitive person.

In Percelay’s ultra-politically correct drivel-dominated post she writes:

In its reporting on the U.S. Army’s announcement that it will provide Chelsea Manning with medically necessary care to end her gender dysphoria, Fox News continued its third straight year of misgendering and mocking the imprisoned soldier.

BuzzFeed News reported September 13 that U.S. Army officials have told Chelsea Manning — the soldier and transgender woman imprisoned for sending classified information to WikiLeaks — that they will provide her with gender transition surgery to treat her gender dysphoria. Manning began a hunger strike on September 9 to protest the lack of medical care she was receiving. The Army’s decision to provide her with medically necessary transition-related care will bring an end to the hunger strike.

While reporting the Army’s decision, Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt repeatedly misgendered Manning, calling her “he” and saying that Manning “refers to himself as Chelsea.” The on-screen text for the segment also put scare quotes around her first name. Fox News, particularly Fox & Friends, has been misgendering Manning for over three years now. Beginning in 2013, the cast of Fox & Friends attacked other news outlets, including The New York Times, for heeding Manning’s explicit request to be identified as a woman. Since then, Fox personalities have referred to Manning as “Bradleen,” mocked her by playing Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” during news segments, and called her a “gender bender.”

There are so many problems with what Percelay writes.

Percelay refers to Manning as “her,” “she,” and as a “transgender woman.” But unless and until Bradley Manning surrenders his male genitalia and replaces those body parts with female genitalia, Manning is a man, not a woman. (Even after Manning completes sex-reassignment surgery and post-surgery treatment many people would still deem Manning a man because he/she/it at that point would still possess male-specific genes.)

The phrase “transgender woman” itself is problematic. Is the transgender part aspirational? I would think so but if we’re all required to march in lock-step and refer to Manning as female solely because he thinks we should, then it can’t be aspirational. From a grammarian’s perspective, these wacky left-wingers are asking us to repeat an untruth, to wit, that Manning has become a woman on his say-so.

This is madness and most Americans see it as such, despite the efforts of professional leftists like the propagandists at Media Matters.

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Liberal bullies attack Matt Lauer to intimidate Lester Holt

/ Matthew Vadum
targeting_lester_holt

The professional Left is attacking NBC’s Matt Lauer for his performance as moderator at the Commander-in-Chief Forum in New York this week.

These people are doing this in order to intimidate Lester Holt (pictured above) into being hard on Republican candidate Donald Trump when he moderates the first presidential debate on Sept. 26. It is sending Holt and other moderators for upcoming debates an unmistakable message: play ball or somebody will get a dead fish in the mail.

That’s how these thugs operate.

In my view Lauer wasn’t great at the forum on Wednesday but he wasn’t awful either. The man was under intense pressure and it seems like he was trying to be fair on the whole. The media piling on is ridiculous. Lauer is no Candy Crowley.

But the way left-wingers look at it, asking Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton real, probing questions is somehow unfair. How dare they!

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David Brock group demands IRS hit Trump Foundation

/ Matthew Vadum
Brocktopus_itswithher

The Brocktopus strikes again.

A high-profile watchdog group controlled by Hillary Clinton ally David Brock is demanding the IRS investigate Donald Trump’s personal foundation for allegedly aiding his presidential campaign.

Before you die laughing, remember that the Brocktopus, that is, the network of groups the disgraced former journalist runs, spends oodles of money defending the anticipatory presidential bribe processing vehicle known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Brock’s empire of sleaze includes “conservative misinformation” watchdog Media Matters for America, pro-Hillary disaster-control spin site Correct the Record,  and American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC that promotes Hillary and attacks her critics.

The call by watchdog group CREW, or Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, has to be the most obvious political hit job of this election cycle.

From the Washington Post:

“The Trump Foundation appears to have violated this prohibition by participating in Mr. Trump’s campaign,” wrote Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, in a letter to the IRS. The watchdog group is allied with David Brock, a former enemy of Clinton’s who has now become one of her leading defenders.

The complaint focuses on the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Trump in the late 1980s to give away profits from his book, “The Art of the Deal.” Today, Trump remains the foundation’s president, but the charity’s money now comes from other donors: Tax records show no gifts from Trump himself to his namesake foundation since 2008.

The foundation is quite small, by the standards of others listed as billionaires. The Trump Foundation has no full-time staff, and gave away just $591,000 in 2014 — the last year for which records are available.

The Donald J. Trump Foundation, headquartered in Woodbury, N.Y., is indeed small. It is ranked 4,347 in the FoundationSearch Top Foundations by Assets for the state of New York. Some money Trump raised at a campaign rally reportedly passed through his foundation. If the details interest you, read the rest of the Post piece.

Some on the Left will attack Trump for being a cheapskate but perhaps they should consider the fact that the billionaire hasn’t been using his foundation as a tax dodge (something left-wingers consider to be odious, unless you’re giving your foundation money to them).

It’s possible the Trump Foundation has been helping the Trump campaign but the philanthropy is so anemic it is difficult to imagine it doing much to help its benefactor’s political career. Even if the IRS takes up this piddling little case not much is likely to come of it. It’s a political stunt by CREW, a nakedly partisan group under the boot of one of Hillary’s biggest backers.

It’s the wheeling and dealing Clinton Foundation with its involvement in billion-dollar transactions, its ties to shady figures, and the debt it owes to the unsavory governments of countries around the world that needs to be examined.

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The IRS Attacks the Tea Party

/ CRC Staff
lois-lerner

The IRS Attacks the Tea Party … with a little help from its left-wing nonprofit friends

By Joely Friedman, Organization Trends, March 2016 (PDF here)

Summary: Left-wing activists like the Soros-backed ProPublica group helped Lois Lerner’s IRS persecute and harass conservative nonprofits that were seeking tax-exempt status.

The great Daniel Webster famously remarked that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Webster’s words are as true today as they were 200 years ago. But the Obama administration, an endless source of innovation in political corruption, found a way to wield as a weapon against its political enemies the power to grant tax-exempt status.

The Left favors cracking down on conservative nonprofits because there are so many of them fighting the progressive agenda. ProPublica, a left-wing “investigative journalism” outfit, opined in a Dec. 14, 2012 article: “Politically active social welfare nonprofits like Crossroads have proliferated since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in January 2010 opened the door to unlimited political spending by corporations and unions.”

It’s just not fair that conservative nonprofits are so skilled at nonprofit activism, the left-wing media outlet implied: “Earlier this year, a ProPublica report showed that many of these groups exploit gaps in regulation between the IRS and the [Federal Election Commission], using their social welfare status as a way to shield donors’ identities while spending millions on political campaigns. The IRS’ definition of political activity is broader than the FEC’s, yet our investigation showed many social welfare groups underreported political spending on their tax returns.”

Of course that depends on the definition of “political spending.” Educating the public isn’t necessarily political spending, but in the Left’s calculus all money spent by right-leaning groups is worthy of scrutiny.

The Left is also terrified of what it calls “dark money” because its operatives want to know whom to attack. Anonymous charitable donations, which are a form of political speech protected by the First Amendment, are characterized as suspicious and un-American. Left-wingers use words such as “transparency” as an excuse to silence disfavored speech. (So-called dark money was examined in Organization Trends, September 2015.)

In 2013 the American public learned that President Obama used the Internal Revenue Service to vex and harass his political opposition. That Obama’s IRS singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny ought to “send a chill” up Americans’ spines, then-House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) told Fox News. The tax-collection agency’s strong-arming of political organizations “is as dangerous a problem the government can have.”

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Fanatic David Brock’s hardball tactics frighten his comrades

/ Matthew Vadum
david-brock

Former conservative journalist David Brock has built an empire of activist groups since he went over to the left years ago. Once an avowed enemy of the Clintons, he’s now their best buddy, wielding influence by churning out a constant stream of pro-Hillary propaganda.

He’s created a bunch of groups that play a big role in politics, including Media Matters for America, the Correct the Record super PAC, and steered money to leftist causes through George Soros’s Democracy Alliance. Some call this network the “Brocktopus.”

But Brock’s desperate scorched-earth slime offensive against insurgent Democrat contender Bernie Sanders is giving Democrat insiders heartburn.

According to The Hill:

Key Democratic players are worried that Hillary Clinton ally David Brock could be hurting her image and hampering her chances of winning the presidency.

In interviews over the past month, Clinton donors, fundraisers and operatives have told The Hill that the concerns about Brock’s comments, particularly some of his attacks on Bernie Sanders, stretch all the way to the top of Clinton’s political machinery.

A leading figure in the Democracy Alliance, the liberal equivalent of the conservative Koch brothers’ donor network, said donors he associates with would like to put Brock “back in the can.”

“I have heard people express concern that what he does could be harmful generally” to the campaign, the donor said.

Longtime Clinton fundraiser Bill Brandt, an Illinois-based businessman and personal friend of Bill Clinton, said of Brock, “David is well meaning but I think perhaps like a zealot. He should keep it in check a bit. I don’t think this needs to be about tearing Bernie down. … It’s getting nasty and it doesn’t need to be.”

One Brock comment that drew backlash regarded his plans to raise questions about the 74-year-old Sanders’s health, seen by many as a low blow at the senator’s age and one that left Clinton vulnerable given attempts by conservatives to portray her as being in fragile health.

After news reports emerged that Brock was going to raise the issue of Sanders not having released his health records, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta shot off an unusual tweet on Jan. 17 to Brock: “Chill out. We’re fighting on who would make a better President, not on who has a better Physical Fitness Test.”

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