Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[arizona1]

i'll give you a clue, yesterdsay tes party was not started by FOX, It was started back in January by what group ?

I know, I know! Call on me!!

A report by Lee Fang at Think Progress documents the involvement of corporate lobbyists FreedomWorks in organizing the teabaggers. FreedomWorks is run by ladies' man (and registered lobbyist) Dick Armey, and if they're not "organizing" the Tea parties, it's news to him. From a letter he wrote on March 10:

FreedomWorks has been organizing many of these "tea parties" and we are listing the details on our website IamWithRick.com

If you visit the website, you can rsvp for an event near you, and you can download guidelines to organizing a tea party in your home town if there isn't one being planned already.

On the Freedomworks website, it says: "If you are not able to organize or attend a Taxpayer Tea Party, you can still help the cause by donating or buying a t-shirt.

The "donation" for the Tea Parties page goes to -- you guessed it -- the FreedomWorks Foundation. The "thank you" letter is signed by Matt Kibbe, President & CEO, who cut his teeth working for Lee Atwater. He was behind the attempt to get Ralph Nader put on the ballot in Oregon in 2004, prompting a complaint to the FEC of illegal collusion with the GOP.

FreedomWorks was launched a GOP version of MoveOn. "We believe that hard work beats daddy's money," said Dick Armey at the time. Armey seems to be a bit irony challenged -- Steve Forbes is on the FreedomWorks board. As Krugman notes, their money comes from the Koch, Scaife, Bradley, Olin and other reliable funders of right wing infrastructure including Exxon Mobil.

This fact that none of this would be possible without the open checkbooks of right wing billionaires and the lobbyists who love them is beyond the grasp of Glenn Reynolds:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/the-corporate-lobbyists-b_b_186367.html