Michele Bachmann’s White-Washed America

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2011/07/michele_bachmanns_whitewashed030678.php


July 06, 2011 12:31 PM
Michele Bachmann’s White-Washed America

By Jamie Malanowski


snip//

The point is not to dwell on the failures of the past. The point is to avoid appealing to some not idealized but falsified view of the past to guide what we think and believe today. Someone who has such a gigantic capacity to rationalize the errors of the past cannot be depended upon to accurately decipher what is happening today.

And here is proof. Michele Bachmann is a leading member of the Tea Party, which is, it is fair to say, against a great many forms of government spending. According to the Environmental Working Group, the Bachmann family farm in Wisconsin got $251,000 in federal handouts from 1995 to 2009. Yeah, says Bachmann, but she and her husband didn’t get a dime from the farm. It went to her late father-in-law, she says. And yet, every year that she has been a member of Congress, she listed herself and her husband as financial partners in the farm, and then reported on her Congressional financial disclosure forms that she had “farm income” of up to $102,500 from the Bachmann limited partnership.

Which version do you believe? The one she wrote when she didn’t think anybody was watching, or the one she’s come up with since she’s been getting so much scrutiny?

Look, here’s the bottom line: Crumlish and I were wrong to be flinging fruit cocktail around the cafeteria, and truth be told, I’m pretty sure I haven’t done it since. But nobody in a sweater set should run for office promising to “take back our country’ when she has such a poor idea of where our country has been, or should denounce excessive government spending while pretending that she herself is not lined up at the trough. Someone who pretends about the past and who pretends about the present can’t really be depended upon to have an enlightened view of the road ahead. And someone who whitewashes the transgressions of the past will almost certainly whitewash her own.

[malaise]

1. K & R

to expose this lunatic