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I was hanging around the digital water cooler and someone mentioned that there was a new hit piece on Jane. So rubbernecker that I am, I got on the Google and located said diary on the website of one Rogers Cadenhead. It quickly became apparent that Rogers had stumbled upon a ginormous scoop: FDL and its affiliated PACs need way more donations. However Rogers had misconstrued his story as being, essentially, about the fair price of a mailbox and why FDL staff don’t immediately answer emails from semi-deranged former journalists.
I’m not going to bore you with the accounting, as Jane has posted a Statement of Expenses. I was more interested in doing a little investigative journalism of my own. Turns out Rogers has a Wikipedia page. He admits that he created the page himself, which is ironic because he is best known–if you can call it that–for catching Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales editing his own bio. Anyway, subsequent to the creation of his page it was nominated for deletion because of lack of notability. There were accusations that Rogers’ friends were voting to keep the page. Ultimately there was no consensus and the page survived.
Rogers has a history of cybersquatting. He registered the domain name benedictxvi.com and tried, apparently in jest, to extort from the Catholic Church. When that failed, he supposed donated the name to charity, although the website is still registered to him so I’d say someone needs to look into this transaction.
Rogers also registered the name drudge.com and now runs the hilarious send-up website, Drudge Retort. Perusing this site, I found out that Rogers is a big fan of Obamacare. I didn’t find any previous instances of him hating on Jane Hamsher or FDL, but I’m sure I could if I had the time. The interesting thing was that Rogers’ big scoop didn’t seem to be getting much traction. There were zero comments on the story at his personal site and 13 comments on Drudge.com, including several from Rogers himself. Then I found a link where Rogers was directing traffic to a copy of the story at DailyKos with the tease "discussion of this article is coming in fast!"
I hopped over to DKos and–paydirt! Over 1400 comments, including just a handful from Rogers himself. Now I’m ashamed to say I didn’t interview anyone for this diary, but I did scan 1400 comments on the Great Orange Satan. That surely counts for something. What I found was that the comments overwhelming support Jane and FDL. There was one guy from a pro-marijuana website who insisted that this is all part of a vast conspiracy. More to be revealed, I guess.
34 Comments
Heh. I saw that over at the Orange.
I was thinking “Jane should dye her hair pink, so they can all go “OOOH her HAIR!!!!11!! Did you see her HAIR????!11!!!”
Pretty lady.
: )
She could be a commie pinko? *badum ching*
The funniest part of the comment section is the willful failure to understand that money in the bank at the end of a fiscal year doesn’t just disappear in a puff of smoke :) ZOMG RED FLAG!!!!
I the hell am Rogers Cadenhead. There is no history of bad blood between myself and Jane Hamsher or Firedoglake. I thought it would be interesting to follow the money in a blog-associated PAC and report on the expenditures. Her PACs are well-known and have raised enough money to be significant. I’m disappointed that she decided not to answer my questions, but that’s her prerogative.
I donated benedictxvi.com to the charity Modest Needs, but Keith Taylor and I never got around to finalizing the transaction and figuring out the tax implications. So after a couple of years, when it wasn’t getting traffic any more and was pretty much worthless he gave it back.
One question about your piece: Only semi-deranged?
P.s. Anyone who uses that picture of Jane needs to credit Neela Lind to honor the terms of its Creative Commons license.
As you were told in your DKos diary, your questions are already answered on the FDL Action site. Which, if you’re this super-duper snazzy internet expert, you should know how to navigate. Here, let me help you:
http://www.fdlaction.com/
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/content/2009expenses/
Welcome. They even allow eccentrics here. Of course a few of the Orange men love censorship and they love to lie about “firebaggers”. Several of their diaries were quite slanderous. There was also a smear by WI. There might be a conspiracy by certain people named Rahm.
Is this a match we’ll see at Wrestlemania next year? Don’t forget to bring the chairs, ok.
The expense report was not online when I wrote the piece Sunday. A look at the Google cache shows that it wasn’t there the last time Google visited on March 20.
If it had been available to me, I would have incorporated it into the story. But evidently, instead of answering my questions, Jane Hamsher prepared that report and didn’t let me know it was coming so I’d look for it. (I had told her my story was coming on Monday and what I was going to write about.)
It’s Neeta, with an T. If you actually knew the photographer, you’d know this.
Or if you actually did a fair job with attribution yourself.
I don’t know the photographer. The nice thing about Creative Commons is that you can reuse work without having to arrange permission as long as you follow the terms. Sorry about botching her name here. I got it right in the piece.
March 20 was over a week before your piece came out.
By the way, the term for what Mr. Cadenhead appears to be doing is “JAQing off”. Per RationalWiki:
I can’t tell you precisely when the expense report was posted. It wasn’t there when I researched my piece Sunday as I was writing it, and in the report Hamsher responds to questions I raised with her about FEC expenditures to “KMP Research.”
Arrgh — the RationalWiki footnote got eated up. Here ’tis: http://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/the911trutherdist…ditch…dictionary
Money talks. Let’s talk about money.
Suck was a humor site. That was a joke. I did not actually owe $214,285.71 since I was just an employee of the company.
Thx for the link to that list and site (I shall bring it to the attention of my Master plunger)
*g*
1. rcade, since you wanna follow the money, who is paying you to write hit pieces on Jane?
2. Do you support the IRS forcing the poor and the middle class to buy really crappy coverage from Aetna, Humana, Cigna, Blue Cross and the rest of the health insurance cartel?
If you will recall, Jane was the only one on the left, who did not cave in.
I pay myself. I publish the Drudge Retort and other web sites and write computer books.
Jane’s position on health care reform has nothing to do with my decision to write about her PACs.
Coinkydinky.
what did prompt you to publish that diary? It didn’t seem to have much vital information beyond some rather uninteresting bits about small salaries and a final note about Hamsher taking things very seriously or possibly very, very seriously. It merely seemed like a swipe at someone that you say takes swipes at other people.
As I said in the piece, Hamsher’s an influential figure in the liberal blogosphere. I read some claims and counterclaims about liberal PACs paying themselves in comment threads and thought it would be a good subject to cover.
Ultimately, the issue of whether a PAC is spending its funds appropriately and disclosing properly is one for the contributors to decide. But as someone who has watched the netroots grow up, I think a necessary part of the maturation process is to watchdog PACS — our own and the ones associated with sites on the right.
If people think there are more appropriate subjects of inquiry than FDL PACs, I’m open to suggestions.
You should investigate Melanie Sloan and CREW to see what corporations are financing them. Such as SAIC.
Since you seem to be taking it from all sides here, I’ll help you out. According to the google, the FDL Action PAC 2009 expenses were posted 19 hours ago.
See here: http://www.google.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Faction.firedoglake.com%2Fpage%2Fcontent%2F2009expenses%2F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
do the same thing for http://www.firedoglake.com … per google, it was posted 31 minutes ago.
*edit* crawled, i mean. it’s Monday, i’m having issues.
What liberal bloggers did you investigate before Jane?
Who will you investigate next?
I’ve written about Jerome Armstrong’s SEC troubles, Air America’s questionable loans and the Randi Rhodes mugging that never happened, among other things. If I think something’s a story I report it, regardless of whether the subjects are on my team or not.
Jaw-dropping irony is indeed your game.
I really appreciate FDL’s activism. You expose important issues and create effective instruments to leverage my and others support.*
I also appreciate Rogers Cadenhead. I’ve never known him to be mean-spirited. I read his report about FDL and thought that it was .. journalism.**
* I contribute money to FDL on campaigns that I feel are urgent.
** Rogers and I follow each other on Twitter and we both attended educational institutions in Arlington, Texas (although we haven’t ever met).
The Trust fund for Social Security is around $2.4 Trillion. I would like to see that increased, but Bernanke and Paulson gave about $10 Trillion to Wall Street in the form of loans, guarantees, and capital injections.
We have already wasted around a TRILLION in the Middle East.
You go after Jane Hamsher, and claim you’re just following the money.
If you think you’re following the money, the REAL money, I suggest you find a new line of work.
If you think you’re following the money, the REAL money, I suggest you find a new line of work.
Just because blogger PACs are chump change relative to other DC money doesn’t make it unimportant to scrutinize them. FDL Action PAC has received money from 9,100 individual donors. They deserve to know as much as possible about where it was spent and whether they are getting bang for their buck.
I am certain that this pursuit has nothing at all to do with anything but altruistic motivations.
Did you see the sun rise in the west this morning?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh8Wl37HYgQ