Picture 11While Rep. Michele Bachmann says she’s not afraid of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, it’s curious that her next big media appearance following that statement wasn’t Olbermann’s show but the friendlier Bill O’Reilly’s. Something else she’s not afraid of: a handout.

Reader Kate writes in to ask whether Bachmann — who told O’Reilly on Wednesday, “I don’t need government to be successful” — has ever received any kind of public assistance. One bit of government help we know her family has received is farm subsidies. As Karl Bremer reported at Eric Black Ink two years ago:

A 949-acre Wisconsin farming operation — in which Bachmann owns up to a quarter-million-dollars interest — collected $47,128 in federal farm subsidies between 2004-2005. That same operation—the Bachmann Farm Family Limited Partnership — has collected as much as $127,868 in federal farm subsidies since the partnership was established in 2001…

…On her 2007 Congressional financial disclosure form, Bachmann lists “Bachmann Farm Family LP, Independence, WI,” as an asset with a value up to $250,000, that produced 2006 income of between $2,501-$5,000…

…Paul Bachmann has collected $127,868 in federal farm subsidies since he formed the Bachmann Farm Family Limited Partnership with Michele and possibly others in 2001, according to the Environmental Working Group.

But even if Bachmann didn’t show up on Olbermann’s show, she did get a characteristically feisty reply from the liberal MSNBC host. To Bachmann’s opinion that interest in her by news outlets like MSNBC is “almost like I have personal stalkers,” Olbermann replied:

“Having had an actual stalker myself, I think the Congresswoman needs to apologize to women (and men) whose lives are blighted and ruined by such terror and threat. Not even in the mildest of senses – of journalists whose aggressiveness might verge colloquially into ’stalking’ – is she anywhere close to being such a victim.”

Watch Bachmann on The O’Reilly Factor: