In the St. Cloud Times (the biggest paper within her district), in an interview that appeared dated February 14th:
Q: Name three bills or amendments that you have gotten passed that are the most beneficial to the people of the 6th Congressional District.
A: I was involved in a foster care amendment to support and encourage people in foster care. It is a very important issue. Sen. Mary Landrieu, (D-La.) and I are working on the Haiti situation. We are trying to put together initiatives so that children can actually go into homes and not stay in institutions their whole life. I was able to pass this resolution honoring people in foster care. I am in the deep minority in Congress and a fairly new freshman, so I don’t have substantive bills that I have passed. I would love to. The very first bill I introduced was the Health Care Freedom of Choice Act.
In other words--nothing. Ever since she was elected to Congress, nothing for the Sixth District, which she's supposed to be representing. But wait, there's more...
(CONTINUED)
Q: The 6th District has had a high level of homes that have been foreclosed on. What role should the government play in that and what is it that you can do as the congresswoman in the 6th District to help people who may have lost their home or may be in jeopardy of losing their home?
A: It is a real difficult situation for people and it is real tragic. The 6th District has had a high level of foreclosure because we are the fastest-growing district in the state. When you have high growth — we had the highest number of single-family homes built in my area — it makes sense that those are the homes that have the foreclosures. The best thing we can do is turn the economy around. If we can turn the economy around and have job creation and job growth, then people will be able to purchase these homes and stay in them. A lot of the reason we are seeing foreclosure problems now is people have lost their jobs.
"Real difficult situation?" "Real tragic?" Real lawyers don't talk like that, conspiracy buffs do. The "home foreclosures in the Sixth District" issue has been radioactive for professional Minnesota journalists covering Bachmann. The Minneapolis Star Tribuen and St.Paul Pioneer Press guys simply don't ask Minnesota's most famous congresswoman about that issue, it would cost them their "access" to this congresswoman and anger their editors and publishers.
In the seven years I've been writing about Bachmann, I can't recall a journalist asking her what she's done to address the home foreclosures issue in the Sixth District. She's done nothing, she takes big bucks from the banking and finance lobby. She's supposed to be regulating them, on the House Finance Committee. It's those guys she's represented on this issue--not the people of the Sixth District.
Any help that homeowners in the Sixth District have received has been from Keith Ellison's bill on foreclosures and the Obama administration's stimulus package. Bachmann is a disaster for the working families of the district.
Who does this reporter--Dave Aeikins of the St. Cloud Times--think he is, asking Michele Bachmann substantive questions about what she's done to help the taxpayers of the district? That's never happened before, to my knowledge. Miserable little access pimps from the Minnesota press have restricted themselves to asking sweetheart questions and re-printing Bachmann press release stuff...The home foreclosures issue (highest in the state) was an issue even before Bachmann was elected, under her GOP predecessor Mark Kennedy. Nonetheless, Strib reporters Kevin Diaz and Eric Black and Kim Ode never dared to ask her about what she was doing on that issue--in her district.
I could have given a better "conservative" answer than Bachmann gave here--that homeowners who lost their homes deserved to do so, because the conservative voters of the Sixth District don't want big government in their district, helping working families weather the chronic recession overseen by the Bush administration and Republican Congress through the past decade.
I don't expect the conservative voters in the Sixth to hold it against Bachmann that she simply doesn't give a damn about the working families in her district. And I don't expect the person who reported on this issue--David Aeikens--to have much access to Bachmann in the future.
Aeikins and his editor embarrassed her--by asking her substantive questions about how she's represented the interests of people in her district. That amounts to a sin of Biblical proportions, in Minnesota Bachmann coverage. I can't recall any reporter who ever had the guts to call her out on that before; I can't recall any newspaper editor who ever had the guts to run a story pointing out that she's done nothing--nothing--for the citizens of her district; conservative, liberal, whatever.
Link:
http://www.sctimes.com/...