How Does Jane Hamsher Spend The Money In Her PAC?
Tweet
An inquiring mind checked it out.
Accountability Now collected $113,695 in donations during 2009, as it reported to the FEC, and spent $169,992 that year on nine consultants. Six of those people managed the committee: The PAC paid Hamsher $24,000, another $24,000 to PAC cofounder Glenn Greenwald of Salon.Com, $65,710 to two executive directors and $38,047 to two management consultants.
The PAC also paid $4,000 to Firedoglake for “rent,” according to its FEC filings. This expenditure is difficult to understand. Hamsher has operated her web site out of post office boxes at UPS Stores in Los Angeles and Falls Church, Va., and the Accountability Now web site states that “we have purposely avoided hiring a large staff or incurring the type of unnecessary expenses typically incurred by PACs (including even office rentals) in order to make our donors’ contributions last as long as possible.”
Out of the $234,920 raised by FDL Action PAC in 2009, $44,192 was paid to Firedoglake and other business entities affiliated with Hamsher, according to FEC filings. The PAC paid $16,411 to Firedoglake for “shared general administrative expenses,” $14,111 to the site for “list purchase,” $9,920 to CommonSense Media for “online advertising” and $3,750 to KMP Research for “strategic consulting.”
The reasons for the expenditures are provided on the filings by PAC treasurer DeVeria Flowers. The list purchase is presumably the sale of a mailing list from the Firedoglake web site to its own PAC. CommonSense Media is a liberal ad network run by Hamsher and KMP Research is a business entity that Hamsher uses in both PACs to pay herself. It has the same post office box as Firedoglake in Falls Church.
56 Responses to “How Does Jane Hamsher Spend The Money In Her PAC?”
Jennifer Aniston Reportedly Pregnant With Twins
PHOTOS: Tamara Ecclestone At The Langham Hotel
Red Front? “Center For American Freedom” Logo Echoes Communist Style
Romney Calls For Defunding Planned Parenthood, Wife Was A Donor
GOP Fundraising Email Asks Supporters To “Knock Out” Obama
Romney Comes Up Limp In Nevada
Obama Opens Lead On Romney In New Poll
What Time Is Super Bowl 2012 (Super Bowl XLVI)?
Latest Entries
Why Do Liberals Support Drone Strikes?
Weekly Standard Rolls Out The Iraq Argument For Iran
Equal Polarization, My Ass
Some Crazy Stuff That Happened In World War II
Maryland Republican Campaign Funds Used To Defend Voter Suppression
The Obama Jobs Record In One Graph
Martin O’Malley All In For Marriage Equality
Newt Gingrich, Filled With More Excrement Than Your Average Politician
New Year, Powerline Still Stupid
Thanks Again
Meta
Blogroll
Disclaimer
The views on this site are mine and mine alone, and do not reflect the views of my employer, Media Matters for America
© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
Just donate straight to the candidates. Good lord
Clearly, someone went digging, looking for dirt, and came up with zippo. Nothing to see here.
I never understood why people don’t use direct action donations. When you give to a PAC
your money ends up going to administrate multiply offices.
So nobody should look at PAC finances ever? Interesting.
What? No bondage clubs with girl-on-girl action? What kind of scandal is this? Call us when there’s some real freakitude.
Actually I found it interesting to look at a different filing — ActBlue. Collectively ActBlue had total receipts of $24,752,901 and total disbursements of $24,741,856, of which $23,078,768 are “Contributions to Other Committees.” There’s a much better ROI on donating via one of the zillions of ActBlue widgets than donating directly to pet project PACs.
D
Strawman arguments are soooo boring. Please show me where I ever stated that “nobody should look at PAC finances ever”?
My point, which should have been obvious, was that a DKos blogger decided to spend his time going through this info. Why do you think that is? Take a guess. Considering the anti-Hamsher venom spewed on a daily basis at Kos, one could reasonably surmise it was a fishing expedition, looking for dirt. None found. THAT was my point.
Sounds like a Mastercard joke is forthcoming…
Priceless!
It’s not so much a scandal as handy information to know. When you donate to Accountability Now, you are in large measure providing a paycheck to Hamsher and others. Now you may agree 100% with what Hamsher’s doing, and if so, then donate away.
A candidate for the stupidest comment in this thread.
Shorter OW: “So nobody should ever look into presidential blowjobs?” Or: “So nobody should ever look into presidential candidate’s windsurfing?” On and on and on.
There is absolutely nothing suspect about those numbers. And you have to know that. There is nothing here but innuendo.
Shameful, Oliver.
Oliver, other than cutting and pasting, did you do any, I mean ANY, independent research into these numbers to put them into any kind of context?
What did Glenn Greenwald, who’s a published author and gets paid to blog at Salon, do for 24 grand? I’m sure he did something, but it does seem like a nice chunk of change…
It’s been obvious for a while now that Hamsher felt the left needed it’s own Our Lady Of Perpetual Outrage and decided to be our Malkin.
She’s wrong on both counts.
Cadenhead isn’t some random dKOS blogger. He’s a longstanding presence in blogging circles, pre-dating 9/11, founder of the Drudge Retort, and a credible online journalist.
Why does Hamsher need to draw so much from her PACs’ coffers? Do donors realize they are supporting her individually?
Jane’s PAC setup sounds better than ‘tip-jars’, paypals, whatever. I guess if you want to support a candidate, give directly; if you want to support Jane, this appears to be the way to go.
Wasn’t aware that was a requirement now. All these new rules of blogging!
That was more or less my opinion on it. I’m a bit curious, now, about why that money is going to the contributors – what are they doing? Is this based upon work they’re doing to accomplish something, or are those payments an extremely large “tip jars”?
Wow.
Seriously.
Man, I should setup a blog that attacks the President from the left daily. If you do that, you can get paid.
>Out of the $234,920 raised by FDL Action PAC in 2009, $44,192 was paid to Firedoglake
So?
That’s like, what, a few hours’ pay to Aetna’s Ronald Williams or any other health care CEO?
At least it it wasn’t to risque West Hollywood, ah, urm, nightclubs.
Go to http://www.balloon-juice.com to see Greenwald’s reply to this nonsense. Quite honestly, I don’t blame him for being angry at this badly researched, half-assed non-story.
Easily the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
Weak Oliver, you got your page views, but this is really weak.
Unreal. Greenwald literally wipes the floor with you as a political blogger and you prove it with your empty and thoroughly snarky response. What a joke. You are embarrassing yourself at this point.
I’m done with this site. (That’s your cue for some kind of wise ass comment)
Bye
“Easily the funniest thing I’ve read all day.”
Agreed. I haven’t read anything that arrogant from Glenn in a long time, and that’s saying A LOT.
I am composing a 10,000 word soliloquy on why you are wrong and why you MUST RESIGN.
Yes, because the way to amp up page views is to link to FEC stories. HOTTTTTT.
Sure, if rage=win (and I think you literally don’t understand how to use the word literally. Literally.). That’s not usually how it works, of course, but YMMV.
I’ll completely agree that this is a stupid non-issue. Hamsher/Greenwald’s personal PAC pays them? This is a surprise? Of course, for context as to why BJ commenters were all over Greenwald, in January, he denied receiving financial compensation from Hamsher or FDL.
Greenwald literally wipes the floor with you as a political blogger
Literally?
I’m done with this site.
Holy shit. This sounds like a non-story to me, but it’s no excuse to go full metal drama queen. Glenn and Jane can fend for themselves, Tommybones. Take a breath.
I literally fell off my literal chair as Glenn literally wiped the floor with Oliver as a political blogger.
I literally don’t think the Glenn should be using Oliver as a literal cleaning product.
Which doesn’t literally mean that I don’t think Oliver is clean, just that Glenn could literally hurt his literal back trying to do that.
Oliver, you are a complete lightweight compared to Greenwald. You link to porn off your main page FFS.
And that’s fine. Liberal blogs fulfill different roles on the internet. You do snark and aggregation, and it’s good for a few laughs. But you do a really bad job with vendettas.
HCR passed. You can put away your little Hamsher-boner now. She’s not doing anything illegal (and FWIW I’d never donate to her, but to candidates directly).
Let it go.
BTW, I’m assuming you’re aware you’ve got Pam Anderson’s boobs on your front page so I have to make sure you’re closed while I’m at work.
Could you like, not have that please? I eat lunch at my desk sometimes.
We will miss you sooooooooo much!
This is one pie fight I am sitting out.
I love how you self-appoint yourself editor, Hamsher defender, and arbiter of what blogs should and shouldn’t be. If I’m ever heavy handed like Greenwald I beg for someone to shoot me and take me out of my obvious misery.
No, no you must let him go. Nearly 10 years of running this site, I’m clearly going to shut it down because some guy on the web disagrees with me.
YOU MUST CHOOSE A SIDE!
TrueTM Defenders Of Freedom OR Blinded O-Bot DronesTM.
PICK A SIDE OR AMERICA DIES.
In response to questions of impurity in ideological purity trolling, calling critics politico purity trolls does have a certain symmetry to it, I’ll admit.
The phrase “happy medium” comes to mind.
Arbiter? I didn’t use any imperative language. I’m simply pointing out that you do what you do, and what you do isn’t really suited to your anti-Hamsher ax-grinding. And playing the HURF-DURF GLENN GREENWALD WRITES 10,000 WORDS thing? Well, that’s petty and stupid. Obviously, Greenwald is a Constitutional scholar he writes books for his main living. Criticizing him for being long-winded is like criticizing you for having Redskins posts.
My stake in this is pretty minor. I really enjoy some of the blogs at FDL, and I happen to think that pound-for-pound Greenwald is probably the best liberal blogger out there. Granted, his niche is pretty specific but still, his writing during Bush II’s second term was indispensable. Moreso than links to the Iron Man II trailers and “Sasha Grey In Red.”
But as long as Hamsher’s (perfectly legal) finances are fair game, here’s a question Oliver — what is your salary with Media Matters for America?
In a reply by Greenwald posted in several places today, he says his payment is for doing legal work for the PAC. He doesn’t specify what this work is (his specialty was constitutional law) but he does claim there is a huge amount of legal work involved in keeping a PAC on the right side of the law. Greenwald also says he serves as co-executive director with Hamsher, and their salary/draw/whatever is a small fraction what a competent full time executive director would make.
I don’t have a dog in this hunt, but the explanation struck me as disingenuous. Give him the benefit of the doubt that a competent, full time PAC executive director would command at least a hundred grand a year and that many get multiples of that. And accept that a big league PAC will chew up over a thousand billable hours of legal work per year.
The problem with that explanation is, they aren’t running a big league PAC. It’s a start up with donations of just under $350K in 2009 between both PAC’s. Want to know how quick you can burn $350,000 on ad buys? This is a long way from being a full time operation. But they didn’t even have $350K to spend because over 40% of their total revenues went to Hamsher, Greenwald, two executive directors and Fire Dog Lake, which Hamsher owns. That’s a ridiculous amount of non-producing overhead for those revenues. They need to spend $65K on executive directors, another $50K on “consulting fees” to the two founders, and $30K to FDL to buy a list and shared operating expenses – for spending far less than a couple hundred grand on media buys?
I’m not going to question Hamsher’s or Greenwald’s motives, but I don’t think it’s necessary to go down that road to conclude that at the very best this is a horribly mis-managed organization. If they’re skimming nearly half of the donations intentionally or out of incompetence doesn’t change the outcome that this is a really ineffective place to donate your money.
Making themselves out as the victim damn well doesn’t help, either.
Lots of people are lightweights compared to Glenn. Unfortunately, his attack-response, posted to Balloon Juice, doesn’t exactly illustrate much. It basically comes down to “we got money, we did hard work, and we did some things we’re proud of, so fuck you!”
Well, cool. But who said that there was something shameful going on? Oliver was a bit off in suggesting that it took an “inquiring mind” to check it out – if Glenn’s not lying, it was already sitting out and available. But I’m seeing a lot of anger over something that doesn’t look all that anger-inspiring.
Hell – the anger seems (to me) to make things look worse. If Jane and Glenn and others wanted to get paid to research, write, and try to encourage people to run against weak or bad Democrats, well, cool, they managed to do it. If you can honestly say you did an honest day’s (month’s/year’s) work, you should have no shame at all in taking an honest day’s (month’s/year’s) wages. Why feel angry? Why not point out the hours you worked, and how your hourly rate comes in at (some reasonable amount), and yielded results_to_be_proud_of?
Oliver Willis is not disclosing his salary received from Media Matters for America, as Greenwald pointed out in twitter.
http://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/11327355783
And as I noted to Glenn, my disclosure is on every page of my blog, and has been since I started working at Media Matters in 2004. Furthermore I don’t work for a PAC or 527.
The problem is people are unable to tell the difference between overwritten bluster and “good”, but whatever – some people clearly go for that. No doubt 20,000 words written to explain what 1,000 words would have been clearer in saying led to the fall of the Bush administration or something.
I don’t need to disclose my salary, though there was no question by anyone about whether I work for Media Matters or not since I’ve disclosed it on every page for 6+ years now. Whereas lots of people had no idea Greenwald was paid by any PAC until now because we aren’t fanboys of his blog. If I’m ever paid by a PAC or 527, you’ll know. And I will say so in very short sentences.
If I don’t link to the Iron Man trailer, who will by God? It is very important.
Jesse Ewiak says:
March 30, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Man, I should setup a blog that attacks the President from the left daily. If you do that, you can get paid.
No, you can’t – I used to do that, and no one gave me any money. And the reason for that is that unlike me, Jane is maintaining a bunch of people who do real research, real reporting, real development, and, frankly, all the things you thought you were paying for but didn’t get from other news media and activist groups.
I realize left-purity tests maintain that the work you do, no matter how hard and expensive it is to do, should be free so you can maintain your Francis of Assisi credentials, but someone has to support people who actually do the kind of work Jane is doing. She doesn’t just “attack the president”, she makes a good-faith effort to know and understand the complications of what’s really going on. She has been up-front about the fact that someone has to pay for that. It’s more than a full-time job.
The right-wing bloggers have big money supporting them. The status quo bloggers (who are defending right-wing policies with a “centrist” spin) get paid real paychecks by the administration, WaPo/Newsweek, The Atlantic Monthly, and lately even The Nation to make sure no one upsets the applecart. But if you do the important work of trying to find the truth and get it out there, you can expect to work for free to prove you
don’t have some sort of ulterior motive.
How convenient for people who don’t want you to know what’s going on.
How typical of Glenn – free to smear others, hypersensitive if anyone questions him.
There were quite a few bloggers who demonstrated that they were useless hacks during the primary season in 2008. You know the type – the difference between middle of the road Democrat A and B was a matter of life and death, worthy of scorched earth tactics against allies.
Now we have the all-anger-all-the-time gang attacking Obama and anyone who finds their tactics counterproductive as a gang of traitors.
Well, we don’t need to read them anymore either. When people can’t tell the difference between friend and foe, and when they actively do harm (by, for example, forming alliances with wingnuts) – then they self-marginalize. I’m willing to listen to an argument for why, say, an Obama policy is wrong. If I find someone attacking me as a cultist when I find some out-of-control screed obnoxious…well, they fail at logic, they fail at coalition-building, and they no longer deserve the time of day from me.
Add Hamsher and Greenwald to the “ignore” list, and that’s too bad, because I largely agree with Greenwald on civil liberties. But the conspiracy crap, the good/evil dualism, and the combination of slur-slinging with hypersensitivity makes the pair of them useless as information and toxic in their impact.
Good lord! I used to take you somewhat seriously as a blogger. But no more.
Can you compose a substantive response to Greenwald’s rebuttal to this non-issue, or do you wanna remain in full auto “Hate Jane Hamsher” mode?
Now you tell me. Fuck.
Face the music Oliver: Greenwald is a titan compared to you. And lame-ass posts like this one just make you look all the more small-time and pathetic.
Call me when he needs to link Pam Anderson boobage to get more traffic.
BTW re: salary, you’re a coward and a hypocrite. Not a very pleasant combination.
And lame-ass posts like this one just make you look all the more small-time and pathetic.
Oh, the irony.
crumanjm, you don’t have a more specific link? i couldn’t find greenwald’s reply.
when pronouncing, vowels are held as a sustained note, not consonants.
though Ms probably count as an exemption.
where’s the money for marcy wheeler?
Oliver thought he could win a Twitter-fight with Glenn Greenwald. Comedy gold.