Michele Bachmann

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
– Marcus Cicero 

 

First let me thank all of my avid readers of this series, for copying, e-mailing and passing to all your friends these many articles on our GOP candidates as well as for all the radio interviews.  I have received literally hundreds of e-mails and most of you are asking me, “When are you going to tell us about Bachmann and Ron Paul?  I’ve tried to save the least worst for last, but it seems the more I delve into the backgrounds of these candidates, the more appalled and disgusted I become.  So, with trepidation, here is Michele Bachmann.

The Early Years

Michele Amble Bachmann, first Republican female congresswoman from Minnesota and now GOP presidential candidate, was born in Waterloo, Iowa in April of 1956 to a family of Norwegian Lutheran Democrats.  Seems to me that most of these GOP candidates were once Democrats themselves, as were Perry and Willard Romney, but they also seem to have grown up in Democrat households.  After the family moved to Minnesota, her parents divorced.  Her mother remarried when Michele was a teen and the new family totaled 9 children.

After graduation from high school, Michele journeyed to Israel and spent a summer working on a Kibbutz Be’eri near Beer Sheva.  In 1978, she graduated from university and in 1979 attended the first class of the O.W. Coburn School of Law, a part of the charismatic Oral Roberts University (ORU).  In 1986 she received a Juris Doctor degree from Oral Roberts University. She was a member of the final graduating class of the law school at ORU, and was part of a group of faculty, staff, and students who moved the ORU law school library to what is now charismatic Pat Robertson’s Regent University.   She also received an  LL.M. degree in tax law from the William & Mary School of Law.

I really find Bachmann’s love for Israel unusual for a Lutheran inasmuch as their doctrine is replacement theology, (i.e., the church has replaced Israel), and her love for the nation of Israel and her statements regarding same are more attuned to the Baptist doctrine.  I see nothing wrong with her stance and am delighted she is a supporter of our only friend in the middle east.

Only a few short months before declaring for President, Bachmann and her husband left the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (The denomination’s website states: “We identify the Antichrist as the Papacy. This is an historical judgment based on Scripture.”) and joined Eagle Brook Church, which is Baptist in origin, but has spread out to a more informal worship service including all denominations.   I am really shocked at this statement by her former church since I was raised in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church and it is very close to Catholicism especially in liturgy.

In 2009, the pastor hosted an event at Eagle Brook where hundreds of church leaders listened to a dialog with Rev. Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Church in the Chicago area on effective ways to organize and run a large church.  Hybels is considered by orthodox Christianity to be into heretical doctrines.  I’m not saying Michele is into Hybels, nor that she attended, I’m just mentioning this as fact to give the flavor of the church they are now attending.

While still a democrat, Michele and her fiancé worked on the 1976 Carter campaign and voted for him, similar to Perry working on Gore’s campaign and voting for him.  That same year she became enamored with Dominionist Francis Schaffer’s works and pro-life as well as being discouraged with the liberal Carter agenda.  In 1980 she campaigned and voted for Ronald Reagan.

From 1988 to 1993, she was an attorney working for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).  She spent the next four years making sure all of us paid our dues to the Internal Revenue Service, which makes her Tea Party-leader hypocrisy quotient about average.  She left her position with the IRS to become a full-time mother after her fourth child was born.  I wonder who took care of the first three children while she worked.

Early Involvement in Education

In 1993, she and other parents started the K-12 North Heights Charter School in Stillwater. Like other charter schools, the school took government funds and therefore had to maintain a separation of church and state, as well as state testing so Bachmann was reportedly careful to keep God out of the initial outlines of the school’s curriculum.  Nevertheless, she soon left the board of that school when parents complained she was introducing Christian teachings into the curriculum.  Bachmann began speaking against a state-mandated set of educational standards, which propelled her into the world of politics.  On this, she’s right.

“The significance of the charter school/school choice/voucher issue is not related strictly to educational choice. It is related to acceptance of a communist system of governance where decisions are made by appointed, not elected officials. Appointed officials cannot be removed from office by voters/taxpayers.”  For a thorough overview of the Charter School Trap see Charlotte Iserbyt’s article and ask yourself why all these so-called conservative Republicans are backing Obama’s push for charter schools.

In 1999, she joined four other Republicans in Stillwater in an attempt to seize control of the local school board.  The slate of five had been put together by a local Republican kingpin named Bill Pulkrabek, who was jailed this spring for domestic assault after he allegedly pulled his mistress down a set of stairs by her hair.  Bachmann seems to understand the educational threat and what is being pushed in the government schools today a la Reagan’s Soviet/US education treaty.  However, she lost this election along with the other four Republicans, but apparently she still favors vouchers/choice and charter schools, not understanding (or perhaps she does) that what the federal government funds, the federal government controls.

Here is a quote from an article by education researcher Jed Brown, “Finally, the entire plan to establish this quasi-privatized education system has a brilliantly conceived marketing plan. Those pushing the New World Order agenda have implored the conservative citizens to swallow school-choice plans in the name of the founding fathers, who would roll over in their graves. The words of John Chubb and Terry Moe, of The Brookings Institute and Stanford University respectively, would have gotten them an invite to a tar and feather party “Our guiding principle in the design of a choice system is this: public authority must be put to use in creating a system that is almost entirely beyond the reach of public authority.” (Politics, Markets and America’s Schools, 1990)

Michele and Early Politics

In 2000, Michele was elected state senator to Minnesota defeating an 18 year incumbent for the Republican nomination, and then defeating the Democrat Farm Labor Party and the Minnesota Independence Party to win her seat.  She held that seat for 6 years with the conservative platform issues of opposition to abortion and gay marriage. In November of 2006, she was elected to Minnesota’s 6th congressional district and has held that seat for 3 consecutive two year terms.  Michele, like many other politicians, has never held a job in the private sector.  She has always worked for government.  She has openly stated that God told her to run for congress and now for president of the United States.  Politicians and operatives claiming that God spoke to them is as old as the hills,” says Frederick Clarkson, author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.

“Whether said in earnest or as a matter of crass pandering, when people say such things, they should be viewed with extreme skepticism. Not so much to question whether or not God spoke to them, but because they were so unwise as to say so.”  Perry fits nicely into this category as well.

She and her husband have five children and have provided foster care for 23 other children, all teenage girls.  This seems to be her biggest claim to fame, and the one she constantly mentions. Why? Because as a politician she knows that people vote based on emotion and not necessarily on fact.  The Bachmann home was legally defined as a treatment home, with a daily reimbursement rate per child from the state. Some girls stayed a few months, others more than a year.

Farm Subsidies

A family farm in Wisconsin, in which Michele is a partner collected more than $260,000 in federal farm subsidies (mostly for dairy and corn) between 1995 and 2006 — that was her father-in-law’s.  And if you ask her about farm subsidies, she walks away or changes the subject.  Bachmann stated that the subsidies went to her in-laws and she never received “one penny” from the farm.  However in financial disclosure forms she reported receiving between $32,503 and $105,000 in income from the farm, at minimum between the above years.  Her public stance is against federal farm payments.

In the 2008 farm bill, (a $307 billion package that would govern federal agriculture policy for five years) she declared that it was loaded with pork and subsidies for ethanol growers.  However, just a year later she wrote to Ag Secretary Tom Vilsac, praising the feds for helping to prop up the prices of pig products and dairy by directly buying the commodities, a move that of course benefited her constituents.   In a letter she wrote on October 5, 2009, she even encouraged the government  to “take any additional steps to prevent further deterioration of these critical industries, such as making additional commodity purchases.”  Commodity purchase programs are not technically a subsidy, but are a deliberate effort of the feds to prop up these industries.  Bachmann has insisted naturally, that she and her family have not benefited at taxpayer expense.

She actually had requests in 2009 to the government that echoed the arguments Republicans lampooned Obama for using.  A bridge project could create nearly 3,000 jobs a year, Bachmann wrote, while a highway project would “promote economic prosperity.”

In an interview with National Journal, she softened her stance and insisted that “our federal budget needs a complete overhaul, and agricultural subsidies are no exception,” Bachmann would not commit to doing away with them without seeing details of any future legislation. “If all farm subsidies were ended, that would be a complete change of policy over the last 80 to 90 years of American history, and that would be a very interesting vote,” she said. “So, of course, I would have to look at that before I could tell you how I was going to cast my vote.”

Of course all congress critters want to bring back federal monies to their districts.  Nothing new here.

Marcus Bachmann’s Clinic

Bachmann and Associates, Inc. is a Christian mental health clinic founded and run by Michele Bachmann’s husband.  It has been receiving money from the state of Minnesota’s coffers from its inception in 2003.  Since 2007 the clinic has taken in nearly $30,000.  Bachmann’s rhetoric always opposes government handouts and socialized medicine, but it appears her husband is benefiting from these programs.  In Minnesota, they have their own version of socialized medicine, just as we do in Tennessee.  It is called Medical Assistance and Bachmann’s family business actively sought to gain access to these taxpayer funds.  The business applied for a Rule 29 license in the fall of 2003.  Minnesota’s Rule 29 certification describes the program as one that “establishes standards for community mental health centers and clinics and is required for certain categories of Medical Assistance payments.  It is a voluntary program, not every clinic subscribes to it.  Bachmann and Associates also applied for and was accepted into the Rule 31 program, which also covered payments for chemical dependency treatments.

According to the state’s Transparency and Accountability Project (TAP), the Bachmann’s earned $27,564 in state payments since 2007.  The clinic likely received more since TAP’s payout data only records payments since 2007.  So yes, her husband is benefiting from taxpayer funded government programs that Michele refers to as “socialism,” while at the same time she’s demanding that taxes be cut, which I would definitely agree with!  Okay, so it’s not much money, but it’s the principle of it…it sounds as though Michele is speaking out of both sides of her mouth.

The MSM has been vociferous on their vituperative and vitriolic attacks of Marcus Bachmann’s Christian Clinic and the counseling for homosexuals that want to leave that lifestyle.  As far as I’m concerned the MSM needs to practice what they preach.  How about learning some tolerance for Christians and homosexuals that truly want help in gaining a normal Biblical life?  Of course not!  Anything Christian that helps those in sin is obviously diabolical to them.  Sin used to slink around in the back alleys, but now it parades with pride down Main Street.  As for psychology, one would think that a Christian would run from psych 101 with all the Freud and Jung propaganda, nevertheless, I applaud Marcus Bachmann’s clinic for offering hope to those who want to change.

Michele on Homosexual Marriage

Michele has always led the fight in her home state against homosexual marriage and states that marriage is between one man and one woman.  Most conservatives are in agreement with her.

The Tea Party Caucus

Michele Bachmann founded the Tea Party Caucus in July, 2010 in order to give voice to Americans who were sick and tired of the government’s fiscal irresponsibility.  However, according to an article in National Journal, 52 members of the Caucus who have pledged to cut spending and reduce the size of government actually requested a total of 764 earmarks valued at $1,049,783,150 during Fiscal Year 2010.  Michele Bachmann and 13 of her Caucus colleagues did not request any earmarks, but others, all Republicans, made themselves pigs at the trough.  Just a bit disingenuous isn’t it?

Bachmann’s Proposed Federal Budget Cuts

Guess where Representative Bachmann wants to cut funding from the Federal Budget?  In late January of 2011, she proposed the elimination of $400 billion from the federal budget, which included billions in cuts to veterans’ health care and disability benefits.  According to the Raw Story article, her plan would freeze health care funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and slash $4.5 billion in disability benefits to military veterans.  I can think of hundreds of areas to slash the budget, but this is certainly not one of them.  Bring our soldiers home from these insane wars and put them on our borders… that’s how you protect America.  Michele wants to take the few benefits they have from them when we’ve got our military spread so thin in all these unconscionable wars.  I find this deplorable.

Bachmann on Immigration

Michele only gets a B- on immigration from Numbers (that’s not to say I trust Numbers, but let’s take a look).  She’s strongest on opposing legalizing amnesty, securing the borders, supporting local law enforcement and ending birthright citizenship.  She’s totally unhelpful on reducing overall immigration, ending the Visa Lottery, limiting unfair worker competition, and implementing entry/exit laws.  Unfortunately, and this is the real crux of the matter, she is 100% for E-Verify.

Goals 2000 is in place, School to Work is in place, Secondary, Elementary Education Act is in place, and all that is left is the global workforce! How would you like to go through the government data base for employment? Link This is what E-Verify does, for everyone!  Read Marc Tucker’s letter to Hillary.  All that is left to finish their agenda is the workforce and they will hide that in “inconspicuous legislation.”  What a more perfect place than illegal legislation.

To top it off, most of the anti-illegal organizations were founded by John Tanton.  Here is a list of his network, and please notice population control and eugenics.  John Tanton M.D. is “publisher of The Social Contract and served as editor for its first 8 years. He is a retired eye surgeon whose boyhood on a farm made him into an ardent conservationist and advocate for the environment.  His conviction that continued human population growth was a large part of the conservation problem led him to chair the National Sierra Club Population Committee (1971-74), and to the national board of Zero Population Growth (1973-78, including a term as president, 1975-77).  In 1979, Tanton shifted his focus towards fighting immigration to reduce the U.S. population, and organized the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) based in Washington, D.C. Since then, Tanton has formed, funded, or otherwise been affiliated with many prominent anti-immigration organizations, in what has been termed the John Tanton Network. He is also closely affiliated with a number of white supremacist organizations such as the Pioneer Fund.  Tanton’s  close relationships with white nationalists and eugenics is documented at the Center for New Community.

Stimulus Monies

According to a Huffington Post article, Bachmann actually petitioned the government for financial aid via stimulus funds.  She even made requests of the EPA, one of the agencies she says she’d eliminate as President.

She also took out a home loan in 2008 with her husband which offered federally subsided lower costs to the borrower.  She and her husband signed for a 5200 square foot golf course home borrowing $417,000.  Experts believe her loan was backed by Fannie and Freddie, and only a few weeks later she called for the dismantling of these government subsidies.

Financial Backing

According to Ron Olsen of Workingreporter.com, he went to OpenSecrets.org to find out who Bachmann’s biggest contributors were, none other than the Club for Growth.  Here’s what Ron Olsen says about them in his article at the admittedly leftist ThinkProgress.org:

Chaired by prominent Wall Street investors like Thomas Rhodes and Richard Gilder, as well as the wealthy and reclusive Howie Rich, the Club collects funds from employees of J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, while being buoyed by large donations like a $1.4 million contribution from investor Stephen Jacksons of Stephens Groups Inc. The hand-picked candidates of the Club claim to lead the tea party movement….

Since 1989, the Club for Growth has been Congresswoman Bachman’s biggest contributor, donating $92,630 to her campaigns.   TCF Financial, is her third largest contributor, at $40,900.   Somewhat farther down the ladder is the American Bankers Association, which kicked in another $24,000.”

The Balanced Budget Amendment

The BBA is a hoax and a huge trap.  Again, the politicians are selling this to the people because it has such a great sounding name…of course we want a balanced budget!  The problem with this Amendment (which quite obviously all 47 Republican Senators and most of the Republican Representatives don’t understand because they never read the constitution) is that the constitution limits what the federal government is allowed to spend money on with our taxpayer dollars.  It is so limited that the funding of outrageous items today would fill an encyclopedia.

Our constitution does not authorize foreign aid, nor museums about rock stars, nor studying of the blue lizard, nor Chinese prostitutes, and on and on.  We have a majority of Republicans in congress now… so why in heaven’s name aren’t they balancing the budget now without an amendment?  This BBA that all these folks absolutely love and want passed and talk so openly about to the dumbed down electorate would actually legalize constitutionally illegal spending, and give them a free hand to spend whatever they want to on any frivolous item that floats by their desks.  The constitution limits Congress alone to the spending of money!

The BBA will usher in a totalitarian dictatorship. Pursuant to the unconstitutional Budget Act of 1921, the President has been preparing the budget. Since the Budget Act is unconstitutional, the President’s preparation of the budget has been likewise unconstitutional. Section 3 of the BBA would legalize what is now unconstitutional and unlawful.

But Section 3 of the BBA does more than merely legalize the unlawful. It actually transfers the constitutional power to make the appropriations and to determine taxes to the President. Congress will become a rubber stamp.

Please read Publius Huldah’s important and thorough article on this diabolical change to our constitution planned by the rightwing who have long been in bed with the left.  Senators Jim DeMint and Mike Lee (neo-cons) are determined to jam this down our throats along with Congressional creatures like Michele Bachmann.  Don’t tell me they don’t understand fully what they’re doing because nearly every one of these people are lawyers and they’ve certainly studied the law.  In the July 7, 2011, WSJ, Jim DeMint joined with that bastion of conservative politics, Olympia Snowe of Maine to push the BBA stating it is the only reform that will restrain spending.   Liars and thieves!

Using the “kiss” method to explain, an amendment to the constitution is first proposed by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a Constitutional Convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. None of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed by Constitutional Convention.  Then it is sent to the states for their votes.  If 38 of the states ratify the amendment, it will be added to the Constitution.  Link

Another huge danger with this proposed BBA is a Constitutional Convention which is also part of Article V and has never been used.  Those of us who have written about the con-con call have grave concerns that this BBA could easily turn into an Article V convention. Should the BBA fail to get 38 or three-fourths of the states to ratify, the Republicans (who seem to be pushing this for both parties) could easily tell the electorate they can’t get the Democrats to go along with balancing the budget, so we need to get these same states to put out a call for a Constitutional Convention where we can open the constitution for one reason only and that’s to balance the budget.  They only need two-thirds or 34 states to put out a call for a Constitutional Convention to open one.  I wrote about this in detail in my article, Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing?, and Tom DeWeese of American Policy Center has written about it extensively as has the John Birch Society, and Bernadine Smith of the Second Amendment Committee, as well as many others.

Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Warren Burger (no friend of conservatives) vigorously opposed convening a Constitutional Convention. He wrote in 1988, “I have also repeatedly given my opinion that there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the Convention to one amendment or to one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey. After a Convention is convened, it will be too late to stop the Convention if we don’t like the agenda. The meeting in 1787 ignored the limit placed by the Confederation Congress ‘for the sole and express purpose.’ “  And lastly, here is a copy of the New States Constitution waiting in the wings for just this opportunity.  It was written over a period of 10 years at a cost of $25 million by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.  It eliminates all unalienable God given rights.

Voting Record

You can check Michele Bachmann’s entire voting record here, and most conservatives would agree with many of her votes. Her most recent voting record can be found here.  On February 10, Bachmann voted to bring Patriot Act reauthorization back to the House floor, despite the fact that it had just been voted down. On the evening of Valentine’s Day, Michele Bachmann rejected a motion to follow House Rules and send the Patriot Act to the appropriate committees so members could propose sensible reforms. A few minutes after that, Bachmann voted YES to support final passage of the Patriot Act’s renewal in the House. All of these votes operated under conditions that permitted no amendments, no compromise, no reform, and mere minutes of debate.  Here is a video of her telling why she voted for reauthorization.

She voted yes on $192 Billion additional anti-recession stimulus spending which certainly doesn’t match with her rhetoric.

To my knowledge, Michele Bachmann has never offered a bill to stop all foreign aid, to get us out of these endless wars and bring the soldiers home and put them on our borders, to eliminate the endless numbers of unconstitutional tax payer funded federal agencies like NEA, EPA, National Endowment for the Arts, Department of Energy, etc, etc., ad nauseum.  The list is endless, but her offered legislation is miniscule.


Buying Votes

Of course Michele is pro-life, and she has stated that she would eliminate Obama care, which I am all for doing.  She also kept her promise and voted against the cut, cap and balance debt ceiling bill, but really, what are her major accomplishments?

Bachmann was giving out 6,000 free tickets to supporters in order to allow them to vote for her without paying the $30 fee.  She also paid to have Grammy Award winning country singer Randy Travis perform in a special air-conditioned tent.  She beat out Ron Paul by only 152 votes in Iowa.  Very questionable indeed.

Conclusion

Obviously Michele is not a hardcore socialist like Willard Romney, Newt Gingrich, or Rick Perry, but she’s still not what I consider good presidential material.  Of course we haven’t seen great material for president in so long, that I’ve come to believe true statesmen and women no longer exist.  The problem that concerns me the most with Michele is her avid push for a BBA.  It is one of the most dangerous efforts out there and today even the Tea Parties are being fooled into believing a Constitutional Convention would be a great thing.  How wrong they are!

Once again folks, we’d best be on our knees in prayer asking God for guidance, forgiveness and above all mercy.  We cannot expect his blessing when we’ve allowed 56 million babies to be murdered in their mother’s wombs.  This is not the America I grew up loving.

Prior Articles in the “Phony Right-Wing” series:

Part 6: Jon Meade Huntsman, Jr.
Part 5: James Richard “Rick” Perry
Part 4: Herman Cain
Part 3: Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney
Part 2: Newt Gingrich & ‘The Third Wave’
Part 1: Newt Gingrich


Kelleigh Nelson has been a sentinel researching the Christian right and operations designed to co-opt it, since 1975. Formerly an executive producer for three different national radio talk show hosts, she was adept at finding and scheduling a variety of wonderful guests for her radio hosts. She and her husband live in Knoxville, TN, and she has owned her own wholesale commercial bakery since 1990. Prior to moving to Tennessee, Kelleigh was marketing communications and advertising manager for a fortune 100 company in Ohio. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, she was a Goldwater girl with high school classmate, Hillary Rodham, in Park Ridge, Illinois. Kelleigh is well acquainted with Chicago politics and was working in downtown Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention riots. E-Mail: proverbs133@bellsouth.net

See Kelleigh Nelson’s Phony Rightwing Series, on certain GOP presidential candidates and her exposé of the globalists trying to co-opt and control the Tea Parties.

Graphics added by Gulag Bound

Comments

  1. AFTER ALL HAS BEEN SAID AND DONE MICHELE BACHMAN IS THE ONE TO LEAD US OUT OF THE HORRIFIC MESS THAT CORRUPT POLITICIANS HAVE GOTTEN US INTO

  2. Kelleigh Nelson is a worthless pile of crap who wouldn’t know the truth if it bit on the butt.

Speak Your Mind