Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) posed for a picture with Birther leader and California secretary of state candidate Orly Taitz at a tea party lunch event in California Friday, Taitz tells TPM.
Taitz and Bachmann both spoke at a lunch sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots, Taitz said in an email. But Birtherism did not come up at the event, according to Taitz.
“Michelle Bachmann spoke at the lunch, however she did not talk about eligibility, but rather general status of economy, politics and elections,” Taitz says. “I spoke at the lunch, however I did not speak about ongoing legal actions involving Obama’s use of ss number 042-68-4425, which was assigned to another individual, I also did not talk about Obama’s refusal to unseal his original birth certificate, currently sealed in HI or any other issues of Obama’ illegitimacy to presidency which are raised in the pleadings. I talked only about my candidacy for the position of the Secretary of State of CA.”
Bachmann was in California for two days for a tour organized by Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, state Eagle Forum president Orlean Koehle tells TPM. Bachmann’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hYPQETfoQA&feature=player_embedded#[/youtube]
Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout†as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.
And she’s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.
Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.â€
But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization’s records, Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann’s recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or “socializedâ€â€”businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America’s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann’s free-market dream world as Cuba’s free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.
However, Bachmann doesn’t think other Americans should benefit from such protection and assistance. She voted against every foreclosure relief bill aimed at helping average homeowners (despite the fact that her district had the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota), saying that bailing out homeowners would be “rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules.†That’s right, the subsidy queen wants the rest of us to be responsible.