Thursday, May 23, 2013

Report exposes fact that Tea Party groups are really a astro-turf organizations that were originally funded by tobacco companies. In other words they serve as camouflage for big business interests and have NOTHING to do with individual freedoms.

Courtesy of  an exhaustive research paper published earlier this year:

Background 

The Tea Party, which gained prominence in the USA in 2009, advocates limited government and low taxes. Tea Party organisations, particularly Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, oppose smoke-free laws and tobacco taxes. 

Methods 

We used the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, the Wayback Machine, Google, LexisNexis, the Center for Media and Democracy and the Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org) to examine the tobacco companies’ connections to the Tea Party. Results Starting in the 1980s, tobacco companies worked to create the appearance of broad opposition to tobacco control policies by attempting to create a grassroots smokers’ rights movement. Simultaneously, they funded and worked through third-party groups, such as Citizens for a Sound Economy, the predecessor of AFP and FreedomWorks, to accomplish their economic and political agenda. There has been continuity of some key players, strategies and messages from these groups to Tea Party organisations. As of 2012, the Tea Party was beginning to spread internationally. 

Conclusions 

Rather than being a purely grassroots movement that spontaneously developed in 2009, the Tea Party has developed over time, in part through decades of work by the tobacco industry and other corporate interests. It is important for tobacco control advocates in the USA and internationally, to anticipate and counter Tea Party opposition to tobacco control policies and ensure that policymakers, the media and the public understand the longstanding connection between the tobacco industry, the Tea Party and its associated organisations. 

In other words the Koch brothers, and other big businesses, used the model already put into place by big tobacco companies when they were trying to manufacture fake grassroots resistance against laws restricting smoking in public places or the introduction of cigarette taxes that they knew would impact their ability to make money.

All they had to do was give it a shiny new name, access the same easily manipulated group of dipshits, and the next thing you know they had a new political "grassroots" movement willing to jump through whatever hoops you held up for them, so long as they kept inspiring their anger with words like "freedom," "traditional values," and "communism."

And THIS is the group now keeping the Republicans on a short leash and fro all intents and purposes holding out country hostage

8 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:03 PM

    What? You mean it's a scam that a bunch of fat slobs with their free Medicare scooters go out to protest for lower taxes for the rich, and less benefits for themselves? Color me surprised!0

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  2. Anonymous3:06 PM

    And don't forget the involvement of the Koch Brothers and their front group, Americans for Prosperity.
    Beaglemom

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  3. WakeUpAmerica3:07 PM

    I could have sworn that the tea party movement was traced back to the Koch brothers.

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  4. eclecticsandra3:59 PM

    There seems to be some similarities in tactics used by those who are greedy and do not care what happens to other people. Remember Pogo, " The enemy is us"? Get the people convinced that someone is trying to take away something they like, and they will protest against their own self interests. We recently saw this in an election in Portland on water fluoridation. The fight was against "chemicals in the water," but no one was for removing the chlorine and other antimicrobial chemicals. I haven't figured out who made money on this one.

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  5. Anonymous4:04 PM


    Sarah Palin is “Tripped Up” With Her Own Words

    One of our readers, Crystalwolf, brought to my attention yesterday an interview Sarah Palin did with Sean Hannity on Fox. I had seen this interview but had focused on the comments about Herman Cain and Palin’s comment “Boys will be Boys.” Here is the interview. This interview was given Dec. 1, 2011. Portraying herself as the victim, Sarah Palin disparaged the masseuse who said that she had given a massage to Sarah when she was Seven Months pregnant, and that the masseuse could tell that she was not pregnant. By her own words, Palin has confirmed what she was trying to deny. Here are the facts:

    1. Shailey Tripp’s book Boys Will Be Boys was not published at the time of Palin’s interview on Fox. The publication date of that book is Feb. 16, 2012. Thus the interview took place almost three months before the book was available.

    2. At page 69 of Boys Will Be Boys, Shailey Tripp identifies the massage she gave to Sarah Palin as having occurred in the first week in March. Until the publication of that book, the only public statement Ms. Tripp had made regarding the massage was the statement given to Gryphen at the Immoral Minority. In that interview Ms. Tripp was much less clear about when the massage took place. Shailey said…

    ”Um, I want to say that it happened in the end of February, early March of 2008, but it definitely happened between January and the beginning of March.”

    http://malialitman.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/sarah-palin-is-tripped-up-with-her-own-words/

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  6. Anonymous6:15 PM

    I was at the Tea Party protest of the IRS in San Jose this week. I had a few signs (Honk if the Tea Party makes you want to smoke crack) etc..i engaged in a few heated debates with some of them. There was nowhere near the number of people that were protesting in San Jose a few years ago. As i debated a few of them, i noticed they were listening to me. I wasn't angry or shouting, but telling them their passions are misplaced, and that they are being used. I really think i reached a few of them, and suspected that they are getting sick of being part of that cuckoo's nest. It gave me some things to think about, and how i can reach out them, divert them away from this corporate sponsored lunacy they are a part of.

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  7. Anonymous5:14 AM

    I read a few articles about this report, it was frightening, maddening and insulting - but to see how easily it is to have regular folk carry water for the top 1% in the trenches is still truly a marvel.

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  8. Randall7:37 AM

    From my own experience - all it takes to expose the ignorance of a teabagger is to ask them to explain their position(s).

    Like Sarah Palin, first they'll regurgitate a bunch of bumper-sticker slogans, but when you ask them to elaborate they get this blank look on their face(s).

    They remind me of that stupid kid in debate class - the one who memorized a few talking points but never really studied the subject.

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