Michele Bachmann, Tea Party Queen, part of another scandal with a charity for our Military

The above is from 2013; Bachmann has done more of these, including in 2011. Bachmann gave the famously odd 'Tea Party Express' response to the State of the Union speech back in 2011.


Pro Publica recently did an expose on Move American Forward, a right wing nut 'charity' for Veterans that seems to be doing more giving at home to tea party 'consultants'. Our own Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, (R-CD6) has been in the thick of it all.

Pro-Troop Charity Misleads Donors While Lining Political Consultants’ Pockets

Move America Forward has collected millions to send care packages to U.S. troops. But its appeals often rely on images and stories borrowed without permission, and its assets have been used to benefit political consulting firms and PACs.

by Kim Barker
ProPublica, Aug. 5, 2014, 5:45 a.m.
Yet an examination of its fundraising appeals, tax records and other documents shows that Move America Forward has repeatedly misled donors and inflated its charitable accomplishments, while funneling millions of dollars in revenue to the men behind the group and their political consulting firms.

Part of an email from Move America Forward claiming the charity had sent care packages to 800 Marines in Afghanistan. The battalion in question was deployed more than 3,000 miles away in Okinawa, Japan.

In several instances, the charity has taken images and stories from other groups and from veterans themselves without permission to use in fundraising appeals.

Last year, Move America Forward even solicited funds by claiming a partnership with Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the largest hospital for wounded service members in the country. No such partnership existed, Defense Department officials say.

The charity's funds and other assets also appear to have been used to subsidize three conservative political action committees, records show.

The Tea Party is an astro-turf movement that all too often exists to manipulate their base with propaganda that has them putting on the fear goggles instead of thinking, that relies on emotion rather than factual information.


In her time in Congress, Michele Bachmann has done well for herself, promoted herself, at every opportunity, appealing to the wilfully ignorant angry white people who think that if the world changes they must be victims. The people doing most of the real victimizing of them are the people they follow on the right. Other right wing nut figures, like Sean Hannity, have gotten in trouble for the same thing -- claiming to raise money for vets, but keeping a lot of it.


You'd think, after the scandal of big donor Bobby Thompson and his Navy Vets group that he used to raise millions for himself that Bachmann would have learned to check out the groups with which she associates.


Apparently NOT.


Now we find Bachmann, along with a long laundry list of other radical right wing nuts, who are supporting and supported by the same crew that gave us the Tea Party Express. This sure looks a lot like long term mutual back scratching -- the Tea Party Express "does" for the right wingnut celebs and pols, and they "do" for the same operators, and the money keeps flowing out of the pockets of the tea party grass roots believers, just one more rip off OF the right, BY the right.