I’m not actually interested in who (well, I am, but I see Jane’s point)

I don’t see Jane’s point. Because as alank noted:

In this tangled web of anonymous moneybags, she can’t even out those who stab her in the back or renege. Such a move would dry up this source of funding, completely. The paradigm is flawed and requires system re-engineering.

If she’s in so deep she’s muzzled; or so dependent on insider cash she can’t call out Democratic Members of Congress that stab FDL in the back and stab health care reform in the back — then there’s a problem.

But here we are, askin’ for cash, because FDL’s traditional, standard tactics miffed a few Congress-folk and that lovely money’s suddenly and inexplicably gone. Whoooda guessed?

Pretty soon Mike Stark will disappear from the pages of history, and no one will acknowledge he ever existed.

You write:
I mentioned … that we’d been getting a bit of funding from an organization, and that they let us know last Friday night that we’d had our funding cut.

Which organization?

If you can’t name them, I can’t contribute financially. Because this scenario reads Democratic/Progressive funders of FDL cave to Republican birther/anti-public option Republicans who are too gutless to stop and answer a couple reasonable questions from Mike Stark. Merely asking them to go on record is hardly harrassment.

In short, the Dems who cut FDL funding are enforcing the same kind of above-the-rules privilege for our adversaries as they reserve for themselves. Funding FDL & cutting FDL funding is a means of control — put Mike Stark on a leash and Dems can pretend they had to compromise to supposedly intractable Repubs, without fear of exposure.

If you can’t name “an organization” that’s funding FDL, there’s a bit of a problem. Is this still grassroots — I believe it obviously is — or has working so directly with elected/political groups become an astroturfed situation? The funding has allowed you to hire people . .. so we’re working on another level now.

Members of Congress called the organization and told them not to renew our funding because they didn’t like Mike Stark asking them questions on the Hill.

So, elected Congress-folks in this group are Members of Congress first; Democrats second.

How analogous is this to the opposition? Dick Armey > website > astroturfed mob rule — vs. — ?unnamed organization? > FDL website > political action.

I mean, I’m with you; but what’s the arrangement and the plan here for FDL? Yeah, we’re authentic, honest, sane-policy oriented — all that. Jerome Corsi’s birthers & deathers are the antithesis of everything we stand for.

But you’re/FDL is either an insider or an outsider — and I damn well want to know who’s feeding firepups enough puppychow to think that cutting that funding will enable another Democratic el-Foldo routine on health care. They want Mike Stark leashed so their right-wing colleagues can still be used as excuses for gutting real reform. When Stark gets em on record, suddenly these wingers pay a political cost — and the Dem’s excuse for doing nothing disappears.

Time to expose who’s trying to cut the legs out from FDL .. . and offer the full story on what these arrangements really are all about.

Thanks for all your great work. But get sucked in far enough, and all the netroots contributions in the world won’t bail you out.

Seriously, THIS is what it takes to make things happen, people. Politicians don’t do the right thing by themselves.