The Democratic Underground website is currently in an uproar. The overwhelming majority of them, Bernie Sanders supporters, are in stark opposition to the very few on that site who favor Hillary Clinton. Among the few Hillary supporters is the founder of that blog, Skinner aka David Allen, who as we have seen before is an over the top fanboy of Clinton. However, what most folks at DU probably don't yet know is that Skinner has a big financial connection to the Hillary Clinton campaign via his wife, Shelly Moskwa, who served as a Clinton campaign treasurer during her 2008 presidential campaign and is still receiving payments from the current Hillary campaign. Federal Election Commission documents as well as Open Secrets available on the web reveal those payments are substantial yet Skinner, in the interest of full disclosure, has never mentioned this to his fellow DUers and none have challenged him on this point...until recently.
The one DUer brave enough to mention the unmentionable at DU goes by the screen name of "dreamnightwind." He (or she) first brought up the topic that Skinner carefully avoids back on December 19 last year:
Sen. Hillary Clinton
Expenditures, 2009-2010
Top Vendors/Recipients
Vendor/Recipient Total No. of Payments
Penn, Schoen & Berland $4,741,278 73
Internal Revenue Service $1,578,478 118
Utrecht & Phillips $665,895 28
MSHC Partners $397,112 18
Moskwa, Shelly $185,295 49Shelly Moskwa is apparently Skinner's wife.
I don't know her curent involvement in Hillary's campaign, though I've read that she is working for Hillary still. Does it matter? Yeah, it probably does matter, IMO. I haven't seen anything approaching open disclosure of this relationship, and/or any other paid relationships between DU and Hillary or related groups. Such relationships should be out there and not hidden or they should not exist.
At this point it obviously goes to whether this site is an uncompromised and neutral venue for Democratic politics. When Skinner personally gets involved in banning Bernie supporters (I assume that's how it works) there is an issue there that would benefit from a lot of sunlight.
There is other info out there on his wife's relationship to Clinton, I won't post it here because it is on vile RW sites.
The "vile RW sites" dreamnightwind referred to is most likely the DUmmie FUnnies which has been cataloging the Clinton payments to Skinners wife since April of last year. Dreamnightwind returned with the accusation just last week with this post on March 30:
The name of the site was chosen when W was "selected" in 2000, Skinner et al thought the Democratic Party would sort of unite under an underground moniker while the neocon fires ravaged the world, regrouping to retake power. My opinion is the Underground term is horribly misleading, it is more accurately DLC Support. Skinner was even the website designer for the old DLC and PPI websites.
Basically, this site is a party operation. It isn't quite official, as far as I know. I do know (or think I know) that Skinner's wife is or was on the payroll of the Clinton campaign. I think there are other formal connections to the party but I don't know precisely what they are. All of this should be openly disclosed by the admins but I don't think it is.
Just a few days before dreamnightwind's latest post on this matter, the Federal Elections Commission released a document dated 03/24/16 revealing a 2015 year end statement on a payment to Shelly Moskwa from Hillary For America totaling $28,014. Scroll down the long list of payees until you reach "Moskwa, Shelly" to find yet another payment that Skinner has yet to disclose.
Even Jorge Ramos of Univision makes sure to reveal to his viewers that his daughter is working for the Hillary Clinton campaign. When will Skinner reveal his wife's work with that same campaign and how much she (and he) have benefitted financially from that connection? Why is Skinner so reluctant to make this revelation in the interest of full disclosure?
