NewsMax Runs My Bloggergate Story

by Richard Poe
Thursday, October 18, 2007
2:33 pm Eastern Time

A slightly edited version of my Bloggergate story appears today on NewsMax. To read it, go here. The article begins:

“Call it ‘Bloggergate’ – the subversion of the blogosphere by Democrat money. To be more precise, Bloggergate is the subsidizing of left-wing bloggers with illegal Democrat campaign contributions, laundered through ostensibly ‘non-partisan’ non-profit groups.” Read more at NewsMax »

UPDATE 7/19/11
For some reason, “Hillary Ensnared in Bloggergate” no longer appears at NewsMax.com. The link has gone dead. I have therefore republished the full text of the article below:

Hillary Ensnared in Bloggergate
Thursday, October 18, 2007 10:41 AM
By Richard Lawrence Poe

Call it “Bloggergate” — the subversion of the blogosphere by Democrat money.

To be more precise, Bloggergate is the subsidizing of left-wing bloggers with illegal Democrat campaign contributions, laundered through ostensibly “non-partisan” non-profit groups.

At a convention of left-wing bloggers last summer, Hillary Clinton announced, “We are . . . putting together a network in the blogosphere.”

Her remarks became public only three weeks ago, on Oct. 2, when an anonymous person posted a shaky, hand-held videotape of her speech on YouTube. In it, Hillary bragged that she had helped create “institutions” which had produced a left-wing “network in the blogosphere” capable of “matching” the alleged “advantage of the other side.”

Hillary’s claim 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.

The first evidence of Bloggergate emerged in January 2005 when the two most prominent left-wing bloggers on the Internet — Jerome “The Blogfather” Armstrong of MyDD and DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuñiga — both admitted to getting cash from Howard Dean’s presidential campaign.

The scandal heated up in October 2006, 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, that they had been getting generous cash “fellowships” from an outfit called the Center for Independent Media (CIM). At that time, CIM was working from an office in Washington, DC owned by the Democrat front group Media Matters for America, Brodkorb discovered.

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. Miss Savino worked for Media Matters as a blogosphere analyst.

Clinton Claims

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?

Hillary made her admission at the Aug. 4, 2006 YearlyKos Convention in Chicago. Here is what she said on the now-infamous YouTube video: “I would wish that we had this active and fighting a blogosphere about 15 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.”

In plain English, Hillary is saying that she “helped start and support” certain institutions tasked with correcting an alleged “imbalance” between right-wing and left-wing 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 left-wing “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 co-author 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.”

We noted that the Center for American Progress was founded in July 2003 by billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, working closely with Morton Halperin, director of U.S. advocacy for Soros’ Open Society Institute. The two men appointed former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta to be president and CEO of the Center, and brought in Harold Ickes — chief fundraiser and former deputy chief of staff for the Clinton White House — to help organize it.

Noting the heavy involvement of Clintonites with the Center for American Progress, leftist writer Robert Dreyfuss remarked in the March 1, 2004 edition of The Nation: “In looking at Podesta’s center 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.”

Eerily foreshadowing her later comments on YouTube, Hillary 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 to fill that void.”

In 2004, the Center for American Progress launched a new organization called Media Matters for America, headed by David Brock, a former conservative journalist who had turned to the left. The stated mission of Media Matters was to serve as a “watchdog” for conservative bias in media. The New York Times reported on May 3, 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.

“Mr. Brock . . . has also spoken with Senator Clinton, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota and former vice president Al Gore about his project . . .”

Push to Ban Rush

No sooner had Media Matters opened for business, than Brock began pressuring Congress to ban Rush Limbaugh from American Forces Radio and Television Service — an effort which continues to this day.

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 N.W., 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.

According to the Center’s “New Journalist” fellowship application, CIM offers bloggers a three-month, renewable fellowship which includes such perks as “a stipend of $4,500 to be paid over three 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.

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 Web site does provide a “select” list of some of its more prominent “fellows.”

Federal law prohibits national political candidates such as Hillary Clinton from using 501(c)3 tax-free, non-profit organizations such as the Center for American Progress, Media Matters for America and the Center for Independent Media as vehicles for campaign propaganda.

In this, as in so many other matters, Sen. Clinton has conducted herself as if she is above the law. And perhaps she is.

It remains to be seen whether the IRS and the Federal Election Commission will blow the whistle on Hillary’s army of paid bloggers. Who knows? They just might. But I’m not holding my breath.

* * *

Richard Poe is a contributing editor to Newsmax, an award-winning journalist and a New York Times best-selling author. His latest book is “The Shadow Party,” co-written with David Horowitz.