WIKIPEDIA TAG
MAY 6, 2015




One of my favorite ways to entertain myself is to take a good dictionary, encyclopedia or nowadays the Internet and look up a subject about which I'm curious at the time, then go from it to other subjects I come across and from that to yet others, skipping around until I answer my questions. In this case I wanted to find out the proper spelling of the word Cyrillic, which I had always connected with Russian language and writing. It was used as a base for a good many other scripts as well as Russian, and it began as an offshoot from the contemporary Greek of 800 or so AD.

From there I hopped to Glagolitic, which was a totally new word to me, and Saint Methodius. My immediate thought was that his name was probably related to the Protestant Methodist religion in which I was brought up. That was not, I found, the actual reason for how John and Charles Wesley's group got it's name, but rather it began as a term of derision at their methodical pursuit to faith. The Wesleys were connected with the Moravians, however, which was a Protestant group from Moravia in the modern day Czech Republic, and they had, it turns out, been influenced by Saint Methodius after all. So it is possible, in my opinion, that perhaps Saint Methodius was part of the Moravian influence picked up by Wesley. Saint Methodius was opposed to the doctrine of the Elect which is espoused by the Calvinists, and which indicates that only a select few people will actually be saved; and further that they are predestined to be saved, while the rest of us poor creatures are not so destined. We are all, it seems, going to Hell.

That could be why I never fully had faith in the story of the Virgin Birth and the Dying And Rising Lord stories about Jesus. On the other hand, it is more likely simply because I always believed in learning from multiple sources rather than just from the Bible, and I believed in THOUGHT over FAITH. The Dying and Rising Lords were present in a number of other ancient religions of the early days of civilization. For more about them, see “Dying-and-rising god” in Wikipedia.

From that point, however, I skipped to the Moravians which have a settlement some 30 miles from my home in Thomasville, NC in the foothills of the mountains. One of my favorite places to visit is Old Salem in Winston-Salem, NC. It is an historically accurate little town manned by members of the Moravian Church there. There are a number of buildings including the shops of craftsmen who are making candles, etc. in the manner of the 1800s and a large and beautiful garden including plants like hops, which they used as we use it today, to make beer. There was a spinning and weaving center using wool sheared on site and dyed with lots of different plant dyes. The colors are soft and seductive I would recommend Old Salem to anyone who comes to North Carolina and would like to see the sights.

From there it was a natural step to Andy Griffith, who is probably the most famous modern day Moravian. A news letter of the Moravian Church features their recent renewal of his relationship of the church of his childhood. See all these things below.



CYRILLIC SCRIPT

The Cyrillic script /sɨˈrɪlɪk/ is an alphabetic writing systememployed across Eastern Europe, North and Central Asian countries. It is based on the Early Cyrillic, which was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School.[2][3][4] It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, past and present, in parts of Southeastern Europe and Northern Eurasia, especially those of Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages. About half of them are in Russia.[5] Cyrillic is one of the most used writing systems in the world.

Cyrillic is derived from the Greek uncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet, including some ligatures. These additional letters were used for Old Church Slavonicsounds not found in Greek. The script is named in honor of the twoByzantine brothers,[6] Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the GLAGOLITIC ALPHABET earlier on. Modern scholars believe that Cyrillic was developed and formalized by early disciples of Cyril and METHODIUS.




GLAGOLITIC ALPHABET

The Glagolitic alphabet /ˌɡlæɡɵˈlɪtɨk/, also known asGlagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet, from the 9th century.

Name[edit]

The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Church Slavonic glagolъ "utterance" (also the origin of the Slavic name for the letter G). The verb glagoliti means "to speak". It has been conjectured that the name glagolitsa developed in Croatia around the 14th century and was derived from the word glagolity, applied to adherents of the liturgy in Slavonic.[1]

The words that denote Glagolitic alphabet in the main Slavic languages are as follows: Bulgarian, Russian, Macedonian глаголица (glagolitsa / glagolica), Belarusian глаголіца (hłaholica),Croatian glagoljica, Serbian глагољица / glagoljica, Czech hlaholice, Polish głagolica, Slovene glagolica, Slovak hlaholika, andUkrainian глаголиця (hlaholycia).

Origins of the Glagolitic characters

The creation of the characters is popularly attributed to Saints Cyril and Methodius, who may have created them in order to facilitate the introduction of Christianity.[2][3][4][5][6] It is believed that the original letters were fitted to Bulgarian (Macedonian dialects specifically).[3][7]

The number of letters in the original Glagolitic alphabet is not known, but may have been close to its presumed Greek model. The 41 letters known today include letters for non-Greek sounds which may have been added by Saint Cyril, as well as ligatures added in the 12th century under the influence of Cyrillic, as Glagolitic lost its dominance.[8] In later centuries the number of letters dropped dramatically, to fewer than 30 in modern Croatian and Czech recensions of the Church Slavic language. Twenty-four of the 41 original Glagolitic letters (see table below) probably derive from graphemes of the medieval cursive Greek small alphabet, but have been given an ornamental design.

The source of the other consonantal letters is unknown. If they were added by Cyril, it is likely that they were taken from an alphabet used for Christian scripture. It is frequently proposed that the letters sha Ⱎ, tsi Ⱌ, and cherv Ⱍ were taken from the letters shin ש and tsadi צ of the Hebrew alphabet, and that Ⰶ zhivete derives from Coptic janja Ϫ.[citation needed]However, Cubberley (1996) suggests that if a single prototype were presumed, that the most likely source would be Armenian. Other proposals include the Samaritan alphabet, which Cyril learned during his journey to the Khazars in Cherson.

Glagolitic letters were also used as numbers, similarly to Cyrillic numerals. Unlike Cyrillic numerals, which inherited their numeric value from the corresponding Greek letter (see Greek numerals), Glagolitic letters were assigned values based on their native alphabetic order.




http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/methodius

METHODIUS
[muh-thoh-dee-uh s] 

noun
1.
Saint (Apostle of the Slavs) a.d. c825–885, Greekmissionary in Moravia (brother of Saint Cyril).
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2015.

noun 
1.
Saint, with his younger brother Saint Cyril called the Apostles of the Slavs. 815–885 ad, GreekChristian theologian sent as a missionary to the Moravians. Feast day: Feb 14 or May 11


SAINT METHODIUS ( from Wikipedia)

Saint Methodius may refer to:
Saint Methodius of Olympus (d. 311), Christian bishop, church father, and martyr
Saint Methodios I of Constantinople (c. 790-847), patriarch of Constantinople
Saint Methodius of Thessaloniki (826-885), Byzantine Greek archbishop of Great Moravia and scholar




METHODISM
 (ˈmɛθ əˌdɪz əm) 

n.
the doctrines, polity, beliefs, and methods of worship of the Methodists.
[1730–40]

The following on Methodism is from Wikipedia:

The Methodist movement is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity which derive their inspiration from the life and teachings of John Wesley.George Whitefield and John's brother Charles Wesleywere also significant leaders in the movement. It originated as a revival within the 18th-century Church of England and became a separate Church following Wesley's death. Because of vigorous missionary activity, the movement spread throughout the British Empire, the United States, and beyond, today claiming approximately 80 million adherents worldwide.[1]

Methodism is characterized by its emphasis on helping the poor and the average person, its very systematic approach to building the person, and the "church" and its missionary spirit.[2] These ideals are put into practice by the establishment of hospitals, universities, orphanages, soup kitchens, and schools to follow Jesus's command to spread the Good News and serve all people.[3]

Methodists are convinced that building loving relationships with others through social service is a means of working towards the inclusiveness of God's love. Most Methodists teach that Christ died for all of humanity, not just for a limited group, and thus everyone is entitled to God's grace and protection. In theology, this view is known as Arminianism.[4] It denies that God has pre-ordained an elect number of people to eternal bliss while others are doomed to hell no matter what they do in life. However, Whitefield and several others were considered Calvinistic Methodists.

The Methodist movement has a wide variety of forms of worship, ranging from high church to low church in liturgical usage; denominations that descend from the British Methodist tradition tend toward a less formal worship style, while American Methodism—in particular the United Methodist Church—is more liturgical.[5] Methodism is known for its rich musical tradition; Charles Wesley was instrumental in writing much of the hymnody of the Methodist Church,[6] and many other eminent hymn writers come from the Methodist tradition.

Early Methodists were drawn from all levels of society, including the aristocracy,[a] but the Methodist preachers took the message to labourers and criminals who tended to be left outside organized religion at that time. In Britain, the Methodist Church had a major impact in the early decades of the making of the working class (1760–1820). In the United States it became the religion of many slaves who later formed "black churches" in the Methodist tradition.

John Wesley came under the influence of the Moravian Church and of the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609). Arminius (the Latinized form of the name Jakob Harmaens) denied that God had pre-ordained an elect number of people to eternal bliss while others perished eternally.[b] Conversely, George Whitefield, Howell Harris,[13] and Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon were notable for being Calvinistic Methodists. Whitefield, who had been a fellow student of the Wesley brothers at Oxford, became well known for his unorthodox ministry of itinerant open-air preaching and inspired Wesley to likewise preach to those excluded from the Anglican Church. Differences in theology put serious strains on the relationship between Whitefield and Wesley, with Wesley becoming quite hostile toward Whitefield in what had been previously very close relations. Whitefield consistently begged Wesley not to let these differences sever their friendship and, in time their friendship was restored, though this was seen by many of Whitefield's followers to be a doctrinal compromise. As a final testimony of their friendship, John Wesley's sermon on Whitefield's death is full of praise and affection.[15]



MORAVIAN CHURCH

The Moravian Church (Latin: Unitas Fratrum, meaning "Unity of the Brethren",[1] Czech: Moravští bratři) is the oldest Protestant denomination emerged from the Bohemian Reformation. The name by which the Church is commonly known comes from the original exiles who came to Saxony in 1722 fromMoravia to escape persecution, but its religious heritage began in 1457 in Kunvald, Bohemia, today part of the Czech Republic, an autonomous kingdom within the Holy Roman Empire. The Moravian Church places a high premium on Christian unity, personal piety, missions, and music.

The Church's emblem is the Lamb of God (right) with the flag of victory, surrounded by the Latin inscription:Vicit agnus noster, eum sequamur, or in English: "Our Lamb has conquered, let us follow Him".

History

The Hussite movement that was to become the Moravian Church was started by Jan Hus (English: John Huss) in the early 15th century, in what is today the Czech Republic. Hus objected to some of the practices of the Roman Catholic Church and wanted to return the Church in Bohemia andMoravia to early Byzantine-inspired practices: liturgy in the language of the people (i.e. Czech), having lay people receivecommunion in both kinds (bread and wine – that is, in Latin,communio sub utraque specie), married priests, and eliminating indulgences and the idea of Purgatory.

Jan Hus rejected indulgences and adopted a doctrine ofjustification by grace through faith alone;[citation needed]consequently, the Moravian Church became the firstProtestant church.[2][3] The movement gained support in Bohemia. However, Hus was summoned to attend the Council of Constance, which decided that he was a heretic and had him burned at the stake on 6 July 1415. 

Within fifty years of Hus' death, a contingent of his followers had become independently organised as the "Bohemian Brethren" (Čeští bratři) or Unity of the Brethren (Jednota bratrská), which was founded in Kunvald, Bohemia, in 1457. They received episcopal ordination through the Waldensians in 1467.[2]:36 ff[3]:107 ff These were some of the earliest Protestants, rebelling against Rome some fifty years before Martin Luther.[2][3] By the middle of the 16th century as many as 90 per cent of the inhabitants of theCzech Crown lands were Protestant.[4] The majority of nobility was Protestant, the schools and printing-shops established by the Moravian Church were flourishing.

Protestantism had a strong influence to the education of the population. Even in the middle of the 16th century there was not a single town without a Protestant school in the Czech lands, and many had more than one, mostly with two to six teachers each. In Jihlava, a principal Protestant center in Moravia, there were six schools: two Czech, two German, one for girls and one teaching in Latin, which was at the level of a high / grammar school, lecturing on Latin, Greek and Hebrew, 

 With the University of Prague also firmly in hands of Protestants, the local Catholic church was unable to compete in the field of education. Therefore the Jesuits were invited, with the backing of the Catholic Habsburg rulers, to come to the Czech lands and establish a number of Catholic educational institutions in the Moravian capital Olomouc, for example second university in country. In 1582 they forced closure of local Protestant schools. By 1622 all Protestant schools in the Czech Crown lands were forced to close.

By 1622 the entire education system of the Czech lands was in the hands of Jesuits and all Protestant schools were closed. The Habsburgs not only suppressed Protestantism but also the Czech language: books written in Czech were burned and any publication in Czech was considered to be heresy by the Jesuits.[citation needed] The Czech language was gradually reduced to a means of communication between peasants, who were often illiterate.[citation needed] The Brethren were forced to operate underground and eventually dispersed across Northern Europe as far as the Low Countries, where their Bishop John Amos Comenius, who is also called Teacher of nations, attempted to direct a resurgence.

The largest remaining communities of the Brethren were located in Leszno (German: Lissa) inPoland, which had historically strong ties with the Czechs, and small, isolated groups in Moravia. These latter are referred to as "the Hidden Seed" which John Amos Comenius had prayed would preserve the evangelical faith in the land of the fathers.

In Addition to the Renewed Unitas Fratrum or Moravian Church, which preserves the Unitas Fratrum's three orders of episcopal ordination, The Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and the Czechoslovak Hussite Church also continue the Hussite tradition in the Czech and SlovakRepublics today, although they only account for 0.8% of the Czech population (which is 79.4% non-religious, and 10.4% Catholic).

In 1722, a small group of Bohemian Brethren (the "Hidden Seed") who had been living in northern Moravia as an illegal underground remnant surviving in Catholic setting of the Habsburg Empire for nearly 100 years, arrived at the Berthelsdorf estate of Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, a nobleman who had been brought up in the traditions of Pietism. Out of a personal commitment to helping the poor and needy, he agreed to a request from their leader (Christian David, an itinerant carpenter) that they be allowed to settle on his lands in Upper Lusatia, which is in present-day Saxony in the eastern part of modern-dayGermany.

In 1741, David Nitschmann and Count Zinzendorf led a small community to found a mission in the colony ofPennsylvania. The mission was established on Christmas Eve, and was named Bethlehem, after theBiblical town in Judea. There, they ministered to the Algonquian Lenape. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is today the sixth largest city in Pennsylvania. Later, colonies were also founded in North Carolina, where Moravians led by Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg purchased 98,985 acres (400.58 km2) from John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville. This large tract of land was named die Wachau, orWachovia, after one of Zinzendorf's ancestral estates on the Danube River in Lower Austria. Other early settlements included Bethabara (1753), Bethania (1759) and Salem (now referred to as Old Salem in Winston-Salem North Carolina) (1766).




OLD SALEM

Old Salem is a historic district of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It features a living history museum (operated by the non-profit Old Salem Museums & Gardens, organized as Old Salem Inc.) that interprets the restored Moravian community. The non-profit organization began its work in 1950, although some private residents had restored buildings earlier. As theOld Salem Historic District, it was declared aNational Historic Landmark (NHL) in 1966.[2][3] The district showcases the culture of the Moravian settlement in North Carolina during the 18th and 19th centuries, communal buildings, churches, houses, and shops.[4]

Two buildings are individually designated as NHL: theSalem Tavern and the Single Brothers' House. Additional buildings and properties have been added to the National Register that expand the historic area (see St. Philips Moravian Church below, Single Brothers Industrial Complex Site, and West Salem Historic District). Ownership of the buildings and land is divided among Old Salem, Inc., Wachovia Historical Society, private owners, Salem Academy and College, Home Moravian Church, and the Moravian Church Southern Province.

Salem was originally settled by members of the Moravian Church, a Protestant denomination that first began in 1457, out of the followers of John Huss (Jan Hus, 1369–1415) in the Kingdoms ofBohemia and Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic.

Salem was to be the central town of a 98,985-acre (400.58 km2) tract named Wachovia. Construction began in 1766 to build the central economic, religious, and administrative center of the Wachovia tract. The outlying communities, eventually five in all (Bethabara, Bethania, Friedberg, Friedland, and Hope), were more rural and agriculture focused. Salem and most of the other communities were controlled by the church, which owned all property and only leased land for construction. All people in the communities had to be members of the church and could be expelled from the town if they acted contrary to the community's regulations. The several governing bodies all kept meticulous records; copies were sent to the Bethlehem and Herrnhut archives. Most of this information has been translated and published in the "Records of the Moravians in North Carolina" by the North Carolina State Archives, now comprising 13 volumes. This detailed information is part of the documentation used for the accurate restoration and interpretation of Old Salem.

In 1849, Forsyth County was created, but Salem was unwilling to be the county seat and sold property directly to the north to become the new courthouse town. This town became Winston, which quickly grew into a thriving industrial center.

In 1857, the church divested control of the town and allowed the residents to purchase their property. Salem then became a legal municipality. The town expanded twice, in 1889 and 1907.

Salem merged with adjacent Winston in 1913, becoming known as Winston-Salem. This was the only community to ever be officially designated as a hyphenated name for a Post Office by the US Postal Service.[5]





ANDY GRIFFITH

http://www.moravian.org/the-moravian-magazine/moravian-october-
Moravian Church in North America
Remembering Andy Griffith

In July, 2012, actor Andy Griffith, best known as Andy Taylor of the Andy Griffth Show and as attorney Ben Matlock, passed away at age 86. Many have speculated that Mayberry is, in actuality Mt. Airy, N.C., home of Grace Moravian Church. But the connection goes much deeper.

“On a beautiful Spring day in May 2009, we were welcomed with generosity and kindness into the Manteo home of Mr. and Mrs. Andy Griffith,” says the Rev. Anthony Hayworth, pastor at Grace Moravian. “Andy, a member of Grace Moravian during his teenage years, had expressed a desire to reconnect with the Moravian church. Through the liturgies for the Reaffirmation of Faith and Holy Communion, Cindi and Andy became members of the Grace Moravian Congregation.

“The spirit of Moravian worship and devotion was common in their home, as Andy began each day reading the Daily Text and his Bible,” continued Tony. “ On that particular day, Christ was in our midst, transforming the various emotions we experienced through the joy of prayers, sacrament and hymns.

“Emmett remembers it was ‘quite an experience’ and ‘really special.’ It was truly a re-membering. Old friends saying hello, new friends making acquaintances; Christian worship with the gift of Christ’s loving spirit; a moment of Moravian worship ending with the familiar chords of ‘Sing Hallelujah, Praise the Lord’ played on an old pump organ. We honored the old and celebrated the hope of the new. Now our dear friend knows those “realms of endless light.” To which we say, ‘Praise ye the Lord! Amen.’”

he Rev. Edward T. Mickey, Jr., was pastor of Raleigh Moravian Church when this article first appeared in The Moravian.

An Interview with Andy Griffith by Carol Foltz and John Rights
(Originally published in “Moravian Mainline,” March-April 1982. Used with permission)

To hear the name of Andy Griffith brings to mind visual images of Mayberry, Deputy Barney Fife and the guitar-pickin’ sheriff of The Andy Griffith Show, but to those who knew Andy Griffith before his tremendous success as an entertainer, his name might just as easily be associated with Mt. Airy, Bishop Ed Mickey and a trombone-blowin’ youth at Grace Moravian Church. Carol Foltz and I had the privilege of speaking with Andy Griffith by way of a phone call to his residence in Southern California. In our curiosity to find out about his background and insights into his profession, we found Mr. Griffith very open, most cordial and an actor concerned with the direction television programming seems to be taking. The following excerpts are taken from this interview.

What has been your past association with the Moravian Church? 

“This is something that is very important to me. In Mt. Airy, when I grew up, there was no music program in the school system. They had one music teacher, but it didn’t amount to anything. There was no instrumental program or anything like that. I found myself very interested in music. …At that time a boy who was not athletic, was not particularly bright or a good student and wasn’t from a well-to-do family, kinda played second fiddle, if you know what I mean. I never felt I was very much of a full person. I felt like I was second class all the time. Well, when I met Ed Mickey and the Moravian Church and through them met music…now understand that when I was eight years old I was baptized into the Baptist Church, and had been going to that church regularly. Our family always had a religious background, but Ed Mickey and that church added another dimension to my life. Then he started teaching me to sing and all of a sudden I amounted to something.”

How old were you when all this happened?

“I lied, though Christians can’t lie. I lied about my age when I was 14 and said I was 15 in order to get a job, and I had my trombone so I must’ve met Ed Mickey when I was 15. He left Mt. Airy my last year of high school. I went to Chapel Hill (the University of North Carolina). I went to be a minister under Bishop Pfohl, and not to say anything wrong against Bishop Pfohl, but Bishop got mad at me because I was majoring in Sociology and, just to be honest with you, I hated it. I hated every second of it. I was crazy over the music department and I was ill-prepared for it because I started late, but Bishop didn’t want me to major in Music and still stay in the ministry, and he was right, … so I suffered under that a long time. So finally I went home and stopped by to see Ed Mickey to tell him and he said, ‘Well, I had a feeling that was coming.’ It’s funny the transitions that your life goes through and you don’t even know it’s going to. The upshot is how important alternatives are for young people, and the more the merrier! In my case, the factor that music was an alternative gave me direction in my life I didn’t have. That’s why I feel in my case and, many peoples’ case that music is important. The Moravian Church wouldn’t be quite the same Moravian Church without music.”

What does it take to be a successful actor, musician or entertainer?

“This is important. Moss Hart wrote a book called Act One, and in his fascinating book he said to be successful in any business, whether it is show business or any business, you have to have talent at what you’re doing. You have to have the ability to work hard. And he also said being at the right place at the right time is also important. But, he said perhaps the most important quality a person can have is the ability to know what to do when an opportunity presents itself.

“Another thing you must have to be successful, and more than that happy, in any line of work goes by a lot of different names: thickskin, resilience and many other things. In any artistic endeavors such as singing, acting, painting and writing, you tend to expose your inner feeling, you tend to say to someone, ‘I love you’ who may not love you back or care if you love them. What you either have to have, or develop is the ability to be rejected, and that may not sound like it would be hard to do, but I’m going to tell you that it is very hard to do!”

In his book, The Andy Griffith Show, Richard Kelly writes, “There are few television programs today that embody the high moral and artistic standards of the Griffith Show. Lust, anger, betrayal, greed, and violence seem to be the order of the day. Soaps such as All My Children, The Young and the Restless and As the World Turns and popular evening melodramas such as Dallas all show people to be fundamentally immoral and the family to be a focus of strife and anxiety…Like the solid old westerns that create a dream vision of the American past, with its clear moral code, the Griffith Show captures a romantic myth that continues to entice and satisfy our yearnings for a simpler world, one filled with hope, purpose, respect, love, laughter, understanding and a sense of belonging and permanence.”

Such are the fruits born in dynamic Christian living. We thank you Andy Griffith for your constructive contribution to television and the field of entertainment; for countless amusing half-hours of afterschool relaxation and studybreaks spent on the streets of Mayberry; and for the gracious sharing of yourself with the youth of the Southern Province.

The Rev. John D. Rights is now pastor of Konnoak Hills Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, N.C.; The Rev. Carol Foltz serves at Friedland Moravian Church in Winston-Salem.




When I was about 12 years old I had the good fortune to see Andy Griffith perform live at High Point University – then High Point College – in the wonderful play “No Time For Sergeants.” He sang, danced, drank a bunch of his army buddies under the table, wrecked the bar and just generally brought the house down. He was a very talented actor and singer. He issued an album of hymns and one of gospel songs, and perhaps others as well. I was very sorry to hear that he had died, though of course he was a great deal older than I was. I was half in love with him, anyway, and I still watch the old Andy Griffith Show reruns sometimes, though I have memorized most of them by now.

REPUBLICAN FISCAL POLICY


A treatise on the history of the Republican party is available on Amazon, showing their path from the progressive party to the tight fisted party of today. It is called ‘To Make Men Free,’ by Heather Cox Richardson. See the website here for a review by Jonathan Rauch. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/books/review/to-make-men-free-by-heather-cox-richardson.html?_r=0. Rauch states that her book is “long on history and short on insights.” Well, I might disagree with him on that judging from her Post article, which is fascinating. It shows how the GOP became who they are today. It dovetails with things that my parents told us about life in the 1920s and then the sudden shock of the 1930s, both of which were part of the business practices of the modern-day Supply Side Republicans. My father always said that Republican policies bring on depressions, and I agree with him. Personally, I think history is worth more than opinions and theories, in most cases, and the history in this Post article is very informative. It explains how we as a society came to value money and power over human interests. Of course, that issue really goes back to Genesis with the story of Cain and Abel and original sin.

Richardson writes: “By 1854, Southern slaveholders, who made up about 1 percent of the population, had come to control the White House, Senate and Supreme Court. They insisted that America’s central principle was the protection of property and that this principle established their right to spread slavery, effectively limiting access to land for poorer men. They contended that their leadership was God’s will. Society functioned best when a workforce with little intelligence and no aspirations produced food, clothing, housing and other basic requirements, overseen by wealthy, educated white men who could focus on advancing human progress. This system depended on the concentration of wealth and political power. If those at the bottom were allowed to vote, they would demand a larger share of the wealth they were producing and launch a revolution by 'the quiet process of the ballot box,' one Southern leader warned.”

Does this sound familiar? I regret the need to use such a word, but I think this philosophy is evil. I don't believe for a minute that it is “God's will.” Richardson's article is below these two on Kansas and its woes, and serves as an explanation for the failure of radical Tea Party beliefs. The situation in Kansas illustrates the innate lack of wisdom of unadulterated preference for the wealthy class in our legal and governmental system. If the government doesn't intervene in economics the balance which brings about prosperity will not remain in place. I just passed on one of those cute emails which so often are about religion and patriotism. This is about the 1950s, and about how wonderful that time period was. Well, in the first place, I remember a great deal of classism and racism from that time period, so it wasn't all that great for everybody, but the fact that it was a Republican period doesn't explain the economic prosperity among the Middle Class. What explains that is the simple fact that it was an Eisenhower administration, who was a moderate to liberal Republican, and followed the classical Republican philosophy of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. If you read the whole Washington Post article below you will see what I mean.

The two Kansas articles are about the results of too many very right wing people taking power in an area. Brownback and others have cut taxes without providing any other income, and now they are waiting in faith for the famous “Laffer Curve” to do it's job. Unfortunately what is occurring is a fiscal disaster. Being radical righters, they have chosen the school system, roads and welfare for extreme budget cuts to the degree that eight school systems have closed early to save money. Many people are suing the state for not providing enough revenue to fund the school system.

The two articles below on the responsibility of states to deal with education shows the nature of that education – or even the existence of it at all – to be under state control, so it is quite possible for Kansas or any other state to decide to stop giving a free public education at all. In such a case, things would go back to the 1920's during which my mother in a rural part of North Carolina was forced to stop attending her religious school – there was no free public school in the area – because the family couldn't afford the tuition, so as a result she didn't get to attend school past the 6th grade. She was a good student, so she could read and do basic arithmetic by that time, but it was a great loss to her.

It is my opinion that if any US state in modern times does decide to stop running free schools at all, there will be a loud outcry across the nation, and especially among the citizens of that state. I expect Republicans may be voted out of office at that point, and there may even be noisy and alarming protest marches or worse. In the Washington Post article on Brownback and Kansas the writer states, “As it happens, spending reductions have been sufficiently draconian and divisive that large numbers of Kansans, including more than 100 current and former GOP elected officials, have expressed alarm and are supporting the man trying to unseat Mr. Brownback, Paul Davis, the Democratic minority leader in the state’s House of Representatives.” What goes around comes around!




KANSAS IN TROUBLE – TWO ARTICLES


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kansas-schools-have-to-do-less-with-less/2015/04/30/6cd6ca70-ef74-11e4-a55f-38924fca94f9_story.html

Kansas shows us what could happen if Republicans win in 2016
By Catherine Rampell Opinion writer 
April 30 2015

Photograph – Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, left, answers a question during a debate with his Democratic challenger, Paul Davis at the Kansas State Fair Saturday, Sept. 6, 2014, in Hutchinson, Kan. (Charlie Riedel/AP)

No more pencils, no more books. No more teachers’ dirty looks.

Usually this is an anthem of celebration, of respite from the angst-inducing strictures of K-12 schooling. But this year, across Kansas, the jingle is coming a little sooner than expected, and with mournful undertones.

At least eight Kansas school districts recently announced that they’re starting summer break early this year, and not because kids have already learned so much that they deserve a few extra days off. It’s because these schools ran out of money, thanks to state leaders’ decision to ax education spending midyear to plug an ever-widening hole in their budget.

In at least one district, Twin Valley, children are being kicked out two weeks earlier than planned. Haven School District is closing five days early to save an expected $4,000 per day, said Superintendent Rick White, but next year the district will likely shave off 10 days. White told me that members of the school board are also looking for other creative ways to absorb the $750,000 in cuts handed down by the legislature for this year and next. They, and their educators, must continue to find new and innovative ways to do less with less.

In balancing the budget on the backs of children, Kansas politicians are behaving shamefully. But they may also be doing the rest of the country a favor, by giving us a preview of what might happen if Republicans control the White House and Congress after the 2016 ­election.

The consequences in Kansas, after all, are a result of fulfilling the great Laffer Curve dream that has Republican presidential hopefuls such as Marco Rubio, Scott Walker and Chris Christie all salivating: dramatic tax cuts, concentrated among those at the top, coupled with the promise that such action will, through trickle-down voodoo, increase tax revenue and boost economic growth.

In the real world, politicians rarely get to carry out that budget plan in a big way. Then Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) came along and, with a Republican legislature on his side, passed sweeping tax cuts in 2012. Despite faith-based forecasts promising bountiful revenue, tax receipts have come in, again and again, hundreds of million dollars below projections. The latest estimates leave the state with a $422 million shortfall for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

But rather than acknowledging that this tax “experiment,” as it’s been white-washed, has failed and needs to be reversed, Brownback and Republican legislators have mostly doubled down. To make up for the shortfalls, the state has hacked away at core services, from roads to welfare.

Education turned out to be a particularly plum target. Kansas’s elected officials have a decades-long history of shortchanging students, and the state has been subjected to multiple lawsuits over whether its funding levels violated the state constitution’s requirements for adequate and equitable public education spending. The most recent major case was filed in 2010 — that is, before Brownback took office. And although last year the state’s Supreme Court found school funding levels indeed to be unconstitutional, the state appealed the decision and has since cut funding further.

The most recent reductions, announced in March, required districts to absorb an additional $51 million in cuts by the time this fiscal year ends June 30. This time, the cuts were cloaked in a new funding formula called “block grants,” which, as I have explained , are just a cowardly tactic for forcing painful funding decisions down the totem pole under the guise of “flexibility.” That way school boards, rather than legislators, have to take the heat for making unpopular cuts.

For districts, that has meant permanently closing a school here, expanding class sizes there, eliminating a math and science teacher here, maybe instituting pay-to-play athletics there. Teachers in the schools that are closing early are hustling to revamp their curricula so they can still cover all the material the state requires. Students are feeling the heat, too.

“There’s a level of frustration about all the material we have to cram in now,” Haeli Maas, a 17-year-old junior at Smoky Valley High School in Lindsborg, told me. Maas recently penned an open letter to Brownback pleading with him not to “write off” her generation. She didn’t mention tax hikes specifically — almost none of the students, parents and educators I spoke with volunteered this as a solution without my probing them — but she said their necessity is clear.

So far, she said, Brownback has not responded.





http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sam-brownbacks-failed-experiment-puts-state-on-path-to-penury/2014/09/21/ded58846-3eb2-11e4-9587-5dafd96295f0_story.html

Sam Brownback’s failed ‘experiment’ puts state on path to penury
By Editorial Board 
September 21, 2014

GOV. SAM BROWNBACK of Kansas says he has come to regret characterizing his policy agenda as a “real live experiment” that would test the efficacy of deep tax cuts to spur jobs and economic growth. In fact, Mr.Brownback’s choice of words was apt. Few if any governors have undertaken such an extreme trial-by-revenue-deprivation in a state so clearly lacking the economic means to withstand it.

Now, as the damaging social and budgetary impacts of his slash-and-burn fiscal measures have become apparent, Mr. Brownback, a conservative Republican seeking reelection this fall in a state where every statewide elected official is also a Republican, is in the disorienting position of trailing his Democratic challenger in the polls.

Mr. Brownback’s Kansas trial is rapidly becoming a cautionary tale for conservative governors elsewhere who have blithely peddled the theology of tax cuts as a painless panacea for sluggish growth. Most key indicators suggest that job creation and economic growth in Kansas are lagging those of its neighbors.

Mr. Brownback has cherry-picked the statistics to suggest that things aren’t as bad as they seem, while arguing that it’s still too early — more than a year and a half after his cuts were enacted — to gauge their full impact. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s bond rating agencies, taking note of plummeting tax revenue and a siphoning off of the state’s reserves to cover current and projected deficits, have weighed in with their own verdict: Moody’s cutKansas’s credit rating last spring, and Standard & Poor’s followed suit last month.

“In our opinion,” S&P’s analysts wrote with lethal understatement, “there is reason to believe the budget is not structurally aligned.”

Yes, well, that is bound to happen when a state hacks personal income taxes, corporate taxes and sales taxes all at once without tapping an alternate source of revenue, or making commensurate cuts in spending.

As it happens, spending reductions have been sufficiently draconian and divisive that large numbers of Kansans, including more than 100 current and former GOP elected officials, have expressed alarm and are supporting the man trying to unseat Mr. Brownback, Paul Davis, the Democratic minority leader in the state’s House of Representatives. There have been particular expressions of anxiety about cuts to per-pupil expenditures in public schools, which have dropped more than 10 percent since 2008.

Other Republican-led states have embarked on tax-cutting programs. But few if any have done so without a fail-safe designed to protect essential state services, such as mechanisms that would abort tax cuts if revenue drops, or allow them only after revenue rises. In the special case of Texas, a combination of rising immigration rates and a robust oil and gas sector buffered the economy from the effects of tax cuts.

Kansas has no such innate advantages. To the contrary, non-partisan budget analysts for the state legislature project that without new sources of revenue or even deeper spending cuts, the state faces some $1.3 billion in deficits in the coming five years. That’s a big hill to climb in a state whose budget for general expenses is $6.3 billion.

Kansas is a politically conservative state, not a radical one; historically it has favored pragmatists like former senator Bob Dole, a Republican, and former governor Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat. Mr. Brownback and his policies are a departure from that tradition. It’s possible he may recover from the predicament caused by his radical policy prescription. It’s unclear when Kansas will.

Read more about this topic:

Ruth Marcus: A two-year gridlock?
Heather Cox Richardson: How the GOP stopped caring about you





ON THE RESPONSIBILITY OF STATES TO PROVIDE FREE PUBLIC EDUCATION OF EQUAL QUALITY



http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html

U.S. Department of Education
The Federal Role in Education

Education is primarily a State and local responsibility in the United States. It is States and communities, as well as public and private organizations of all kinds, that establish schools and colleges, develop curricula, and determine requirements for enrollment and graduation. The structure of education finance in America reflects this predominant State and local role. Of an estimated $1.15 trillion being spent nationwide on education at all levels for school year 2011-2012, a substantial majority will come from State, local, and private sources. This is especially true at the elementary and secondary level, where about 87.7 percent of the funds will come from non-Federal sources.

That means the Federal contribution to elementary and secondary education is about 10.8 percent, which includes funds not only from the Department of Education (ED) but also from other Federal agencies, such as the Department of Health and Human Services' Head Start program and the Department of Agriculture's School Lunch program.

Although ED's share of total education funding in the U.S. is relatively small, ED works hard to get a big bang for its taxpayer-provided bucks by targeting its funds where they can do the most good. This targeting reflects the historical development of the Federal role in education as a kind of "emergency response system," a means of filling gaps in State and local support for education when critical national needs arise.



http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1882/Constitutional-Requirements-Governing-American-Education.html

Constitutional Requirements Governing American Education - Federal Constitutional Requirements, State Constitutional Issues, Conclusion

The right to a free public education is found in the various state constitutions and not in the federal constitution. Every state has a provision in its constitution, commonly called the "education article," that guarantees some form of free public education, usually through the twelfth grade. The federal constitution, on the other hand, contains no such guarantee. In San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriquez, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 held that education is not a "fundamental right" under the U.S. Constitution. Thus, as a matter of constitutional law, the founding fathers left it to the states to decide whether to provide an education or not and, if deciding to provide one, determine at what level of quality.

Not only does the federal constitution confer no right to education, it does not even explicitly empower the U.S. Congress to legislate on the subject. Most federal education legislation is therefore enacted under the "spending clause" of the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority to tax and spend for the general welfare. Since federal grants to the states may be conditioned upon the state's adoption of certain legal and regulatory structures, the federal government has been able to exercise substantial authority over K–12 education policy.

This kind of carrot-and-stick approach underlies much federal education law, from the setting of nationwide achievement standards to the education of students with disabilities to Title I and other federal grants relating to education. That other great source of federal regulatory authority, the Constitution's "commerce clause," however, has not been used to justify federal legislation in these areas. In United States v. Lopez, the Supreme Court in 1995 held that a law making it a crime to possess a firearm within a certain distance of a school was an impermissible overextension of Congress's commerce power. Even the justices dissenting in Lopez agreed that the content of education was a classic area of state, not federal, authority.

Nevertheless, once a state decides to provide an education to its children, as every state has, the provision of such education must be consistent with other federally guaranteed constitutional rights, such as the Fourteenth Amendment's right to equal protection under the law and the First Amendment's right to the free exercise of, and the nonestablishment of, religion. Therefore, even though the U.S. Constitution does not, in the first instance, require that an education be provided, it nevertheless has had a significant effect on American education.

Any treatment of education and constitutional rights must begin with the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees every citizen equal protection under the law. Application of this doctrine has been most profound in the area of school desegregation. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state-sponsored racial segregation of schools in the famous case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. This decision and hundreds of later court decisions applying it to individual school districts all over the United States have had major ramifications on virtually every facet of school district operations from the mid-1950s into the twenty-first century. This has been true not only in the South, but throughout the rest of the country, as school districts and courts struggled with how to effectively desegregate the nation's schools. In the decades since Brown, most school districts have eliminated "vestiges" of state-sponsored segregation, have been declared to be a "unitary" school district (as opposed to a former dual-race system), and have been released from federal court supervision.

Since the 1970s plaintiffs have brought "adequacy" suits in more than twenty states, alleging that the state has failed to provide an "adequate" education, a right guaranteed by many state constitutions. Generally, such suits allege that educational "inputs," such as facilities, curriculum, textbooks and other instructional materials and equipment, and number and quality of teachers, are insufficient to enable schools and school districts to provide an "adequate" education for their students. Plaintiffs also rely on substandard "outcomes," as evidenced by low scores on standardized tests, low graduation rates, and high dropout rates as proof that the state has failed to provide an adequate education for substantial numbers of its children.

Such suits are normally based on the "education article" contained in most state constitutions that requires the state legislature to provide for some type of a "system" of free public schools. Generally, the education articles are couched in fairly vague terms, such as requiring "a thorough and efficient system of education" or a "system of free common schools." Although the constitutional language rarely gets any more specific than the foregoing examples, the highest courts of many states have interpreted such language to require an "adequate" or "sound, basic" education.

In several states, adequacy suits have been dismissed on the grounds that they involve political questions reserved by the state constitution to the legislature, and therefore that they violate the separation of powers doctrine. In essence, because the terms used both by the courts (e.g., "adequate") and the constitution (e.g., "thorough," "efficient") are ambiguous and capable of many meanings, these courts have held that if the courts decided such cases, they would in effect be substituting themselves for the legislature in determining important policy questions normally reserved by the state constitution to the legislative branch (e.g., what level of education to provide and how much of the state's resources to devote to education).







A SHORT HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-gop-stopped-caring-about-you-how-the-republicans-became-selfish/2014/09/17/7fe87a70-3dc5-11e4-9587-5dafd96295f0_story.html

How the GOP stopped caring about you
By Heather Cox Richardson 
September 19, 2014

In 1862 , in the midst of the Civil War, Republican Justin Smith Morrill stood in Congress to defend his party’s invention: an income tax . The government had the right to demand 99 percent of a man’s property, the Vermont representative thundered. If the nation needs it, “the property of the people . . . belongs to the government .” The Republican Congress passed the income tax — as well as a spate of other taxes — and went on to create a strong national government. By the time the war ended, the GOP had invented national banking , currency and taxation ; had provided schools and homes for poor Americans; and had freed the country’s 4 million slaves.

A half-century later, when corporations dominated the economy and their owners threw their weight into political contests, Theodore Roosevelt fulminated against that “small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.” Insisting that America must return to “an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him,” the Republican president called for government to regulate business, prohibit corporate funding of political campaigns, and impose income and inheritance taxes.

In the mid-20th century, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower recoiled from using American resources to build weapons alone, warning, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” He called for government funding for schools, power plants, roads and hospitals.

At these crucial moments, Republican leaders argued that economic opportunity is central to the American ideal and that government must enable all to rise. But each time the party has taken this stand, it has sparked a backlash from within, prompting the GOP to throw its support behind America’s wealthiest people and to blame those who fall behind for their own poverty.

How did the progressive Republican Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Eisenhower become the reactionary party of Ronald Reagan, the tea party and Paul Ryan?

There is nothing random about these ideological shifts. They reflect the party’s — and the nation’s — central unresolved problem: the tension between equality of opportunity and protection of private property.

This tension has driven American politics since the nation’s earliest days. The Declaration of Independence promised citizens equal access to economic opportunity. This was the powerful principle for which men were willing to fight the American Revolution, but it was never codified in law. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they assumed that the country’s vast resources would ensure equality of opportunity. Worried instead about stability, they enshrined in the Constitution another principle: that property rights must be protected.

Soon after the Constitution was ratified, American settlers poured across the Appalachians and into the new lands to the west, hoping to work their way to economic security. There, some men settled on better land than others; some had family money; some were rich enough already to own slaves to work their lands — and quickly, those men accumulated more than others. This stratification of wealth revealed the disparity between the Declaration and the Constitution.

Along with wealth, slave owners gained political power, which they used to secure legislation promoting their interests. Gradually, the laws they put in place circumscribed other Americans’ ability to rise. Wealth moved upward; equality of opportunity faltered.

By 1854, Southern slaveholders, who made up about 1 percent of the population, had come to control the White House, Senate and Supreme Court. They insisted that America’s central principle was the protection of property and that this principle established their right to spread slavery, effectively limiting access to land for poorer men. They contended that their leadership was God’s will. Society functioned best when a workforce with little intelligence and no aspirations produced food, clothing, housing and other basic requirements, overseen by wealthy, educated white men who could focus on advancing human progress.

This system depended on the concentration of wealth and political power. If those at the bottom were allowed to vote, they would demand a larger share of the wealth they were producing and launch a revolution by “the quiet process of the ballot box,” one Southern leader warned.

It was this very scenario that inspired the creation of the Republican Party. Northern men who aspired to better themselves rejected the idea that they were part of a permanent underclass; they reiterated the promise of the Declaration of Independence that every man was created equal and argued that the government must guarantee all men equal access to economic opportunity. Only widespread prosperity could maintain a healthy society. They organized the Republican Party in 1854 to push back against the control of the government by wealthy slaveholders. Republicans “are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar,” Abraham Lincoln explained.

In 1860, the Republicans put Lincoln in the White House, and Southerners left the Union. Their absence opened the way for the new party to reshape the national government, from protecting the wealth of propertied men to promoting economic opportunity for everyone. Prodded by the needs of the Union cause, the Republican Party created a strong national government that educated young men and gave them land to farm. Ultimately, the GOP abolished slavery, then gave freedmen the vote so they could protect their own economic interests.

Civil War Republicans rejected the idea that they were enacting welfare legislation. Rather, they argued, it was a legitimate use of the government to promote broad-based economic growth. The Founding Fathers had neglected to guard against the wealthy dominating and subverting the government, but Lincoln’s Republican Party addressed that omission.

Almost as soon as the Civil War ended, the Republicans’ egalitarian vision came under attack. The war had required Americans to pay national taxes for the first time, and when government-funded programs helped former slaves and immigrant workers, opponents saw the very wealth redistribution Southern leaders had feared. Eastern Republicans, whose industries flourished under the party’s economic policies, began to focus on protecting their interests rather than promoting opportunity. Within just a few years, they drove the party to embrace the ideas it had fought a war to expunge. By the 1870s, powerful Republicans were railing against the “socialism” and “communism” that might lead the government to redistribute wealth through public works projects and social welfare laws. The party began to focus on defending the interests of business, and money and power became concentrated at the top of society.

In the 1880s, voters turned to the Democrats, and the Republican Party restricted voting and jiggered the electoral system to stay in power, adding six states to the Union in an attempt to stack the Senate. When their efforts failed and voters elected a Democratic government in 1892, Republican leaders predicted economic disaster, encouraged investors to shun the stock market, prompted a run on treasury gold and precipitated an economic crash.

In three decades, the Republican Party had taken the nation to opposite extremes. Once the driving agents of economic opportunity, Republicans had become the engineers of economic ruin.

As Lincoln had done before him, Theodore Roosevelt recognized the danger of a system that concentrated wealth and power. He came of age during the 1880s, the height of early American industrialization, when wealth was gathered in the hands of business owners who built empires with the labor of unskilled urban workers. Opposing the industrialists’ control over government, Roosevelt turned back to the original Republican vision, adapting it to his time. He called for government regulation of business and promotion of education to guarantee a level playing field, and he forced national leaders again to take measures to protect economic opportunity. They cleaned up the tenements, factories and adulterated food that sickened workers; regulated railroad shipping rates; broke up trusts; protected public lands; and promoted education and women’s health to guarantee that no hard-working American would be locked into poverty.

The backlash against this second expansion of the middle class was quick and dramatic, especially amid the labor and racial unrest following World War I. Republicans accused workers and African Americans of plotting to bring the Bolshevik revolution to America, and demanded support for unbridled capitalism from all Americans. When the party retook power in the 1920s, its leaders slashed taxes and business regulation, insisting that a strong business sector would create wealth for everyone. “The chief business of the American people,” said Republican President Calvin Coolidge, “is business.”

Like 30 years before, wealth became concentrated at the top of the economic scale and declining purchasing power among the majority of Americans destabilized the economy. When the 1929 crash wiped out disposable income, there were not enough consumers to fuel a recovery. Americans clamored for government aid, but Republican President Herbert Hoover echoed his party’s big-business rhetoric of the 1890s. His administration blamed greedy, lazy American workers for the crash and insisted that the only things that would spark a recovery were lower taxes and pay cuts for public employees. “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon insisted. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”

The Great Depression settled over the country. The economy would not recover until the New Deal and World War II pumped money into it.

At the end of World War II, the Republican cycle began once more. Dwight Eisenhower renewed the effort to expand the middle class, adapting that vision to the modern era. Facing the challenge of leading a superpower in a divided nuclear world, he fervently believed that America had to promote economic prosperity across the globe to prevent the political and religious extremism that sparked wars. Like Lincoln and Roosevelt before him, Eisenhower adhered to the classic Republican view of government and set out to use it to guarantee economic opportunity in the postwar world. He cut regulations and price controls for certain businesses, but vetoed laws he thought unfairly favored businessmen and endorsed an upper income-tax bracket of 91 percent. Under his direction, Congress invested in education and infrastructure: The 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act remains one of the largest public-works programs in history. He defended the right to economic opportunity for every hard-working American, putting government muscle behind desegregation. During Eisenhower’s administration, the middle class expanded, and the country thrived.

But business leaders who hated government regulation insisted that Eisenhower’s policies were tantamount to communism. They pointed to desegregation as proof that the government was redistributing tax dollars to undeserving minorities, and their mingling of racism and communist fears won votes. By the 1970s, in an uncanny echo of the 1890s and the 1920s, Republican economists had embraced the old idea that only deregulation and unfettered capitalism would create wealth, which would then trickle down to everyone.

After 1980, the government slashed taxes and social welfare spending, even as it boosted defense spending, and once again, wealth stratified. Between 1979 and 2008, the after-tax income of the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans grew 275 percent. By 2007, the top fifth of American earners made more than the other four-fifths combined.

In the early 21st century, the U.S. economy, after years of Republican control, looked much like that of the American South before the Civil War. Business and wealth were entrenched in the nation’s political and judicial system, while most Americans found themselves burdened with debt and stagnating incomes. It appeared likely that Congress and the courts would move in only one direction: to strengthen the tax policies and defense spending that served business, and to loosen restraints on the ability of corporations to influence elections. In 2004, as the country mourned the death of Republican icon Ronald Reagan, it was easy to imagine that Lincoln’s vision was finally, and irreparably, doomed.

But cracks in the economy were starting to show. Easy money had fed an unsustainable real estate boom in the early years of the century. When the market for safe mortgages began to dry up, banks began lending money to borrowers who were likely to have a hard time keeping current on their loans. That risk was hidden as the loans were “bundled” and exchanged widely in financial markets. When the economy softened in 2006 and home values fell precipitously, the resulting mortgage defaults left banks saddled with bad loans and worthless real estate, further weakening a fragile economy. Republican economic policy had no answers, and in September 2008, the financial world began to crumble.

Financiers impressed upon President George W. Bush that it was imperative to bail out the big banks; their collapse, they claimed, would destroy the world economy. Bush, along with most members of Congress, got behind the Troubled Asset Relief Program, but movement conservatives in Congress opposed it as yet another big-government program. They insisted that mitigating the crisis was not the proper role of government, and that the only way to boost the economy was to cut taxes and spending and reduce regulations on business.

As unemployment climbed, housing prices fell and the stock market plummeted, erasing Americans’ retirement savings, the GOP completed its third cycle, witnessing the abandonment by the party of its founding principles, the precipitation of an economic crash and a transfer of power to the Democrats. The victory of Barack Obama in the 2008 election constituted an explicit and overwhelming rejection of an ideology that had engulfed the Republican Party since Reagan won the White House in 1980.

The history of the Republican Party shows why, since the Civil War, the nation has been caught in cycles of progressivism and reaction. Is it possible for the party — and the country — to resolve this tension? Surely the original Republican argument that economic opportunity must be advanced by an active government, the idea conceived by Lincoln and adopted by Roosevelt and Eisenhower, could work in the modern global economy as it did in the era of industrialization and in the nuclear age. But can the party shed the opposing argument, developed in the conflicts of the late 19th century and recycled ever since, that government activism is tantamount to socialism?

Perhaps with the influx of young people, immigrants and minorities into the voting population, the cycle can finally be broken. These voters are too young to remember the Cold War and are more comfortable across ethnic lines, making it harder to rally them with the specters of socialism or racial conflict. Forced to adapt to a changing nation, in this century, perhaps, the Republican Party will find a way to stay committed to the ideals of its founders.

THE REAL TEA PARTY
May 1, 2015

Far from a true “grassroots movement,” the Tea Party is the brainchild of Big Tobacco and the Koch brothers. At least, that's what Huffington Post says. It always seemed unlikely to me that the sizable bunch of frequently rather goofy -looking right wing radicals of which the Tea Party is comprised could have come together as an organized movement in 2009, strictly by spontaneous means. See the articles below on the origins and characteristics of the Tea Party.

The precise identity of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” which was, indeed, trying to destroy the Clintons and the US government itself, is laid out in the New York Times article “covert operations,” by Jane Mayer, a reporter at large, dated august 30, 2010. It is very long and detailed, too long to include on this blog, but it will answer nearly every question you may have about the Koch Brothers and their role in the modern political situation in the US. It also makes clear why Citizens United must be overturned. It is found on the website http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operations.







http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brendan-demelle/study-confirms-tea-party-_b_2663125.html

Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaire Koch Brothers
Brendan DeMelle, Executive Director, DeSmogBlog.com
2/11/2013

A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of theTea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene.

Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf effort was curated by wealthy industrialists years in advance. Many of the anti-science operatives who defended cigarettes are currently deploying their tobacco-inspired playbook internationally to evade accountability for the fossil fuel industry's role in driving climate disruption.

The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health, traces the roots of the Tea Party's anti-tax movement back to the early 1980s when tobacco companies began to invest in third party groups to fight excise taxes on cigarettes, as well as health studies finding a link between cancer and secondhand cigarette smoke.

Published in the peer-reviewed academic journal, Tobacco Control, the study titled, 'To quarterback behind the scenes, third party efforts': the tobacco industry and the Tea Party, is not just an historical account of activities in a bygone era. As senior author, Stanton Glantz, a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) professor of medicine, writes:

"Nonprofit organizations associated with the Tea Party have longstanding ties to tobacco companies, and continue to advocate on behalf of the tobacco industry's anti-tax, anti-regulation agenda."

The two main organizations identified in the UCSF Quarterback study are Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks. Both groups are now "supporting the tobacco companies' political agenda by mobilizing local Tea Party opposition to tobacco taxes and smoke-free laws." Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity were once a single organization called Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). CSE was founded in 1984 by the infamous Koch Brothers, David and Charles Koch, and received over $5.3 million from tobacco companies, mainly Philip Morris, between 1991 and 2004.

In 1990, Tim Hyde, RJR Tobacco's head of national field operations, in an eerily similar description of the Tea Party today, explained why groups like CSE were important to the tobacco industry's fight against government regulation. Hyde wrote:

"... coalition building should proceed along two tracks: a) a grassroots organizational and largely local track,; b) and a national, intellectual track within the DC-New York corridor. Ultimately, we are talking about a "movement," a national effort to change the way people think about government's (and big business) role in our lives. Any such effort requires an intellectual foundation - a set of theoretical and ideological arguments on its behalf." 

The common public understanding of the origins of the Tea Party is that it is a popular grassroots uprising that began with anti-tax protests in 2009.

However, the Quarterback study reveals that in 2002, the Kochs and tobacco-backed CSE designed and made public the first Tea Party Movement website under the web address www.usteaparty.com. Here's a screenshot of the archived U.S. Tea Party site, as it appeared online on Sept. 13, 2002:

CSE describes the U.S. Tea Party site, "In 2002, our U.S. Tea Party is a national event, hosted continuously online, and open to all Americans who feel our taxes are too high and the tax code is too complicated." The site features a "Patriot Guest book" where supporters can write a message of support for CSE and the U.S. Tea Party movement.

Sometime around September 2011, the U.S. Tea Party site was taken offline. According to the DNS registry, the web address www.usteaparty.com is currently owned by Freedomworks. 

The implications of the UCSF Quarterback report are widespread. The main concern expressed by the authors lies in what they see happening overseas as the Tea Party movement expands internationally, training activists in 30 countries including Israel, Georgia, Japan and Serbia.

As the authors explain:

"This international expansion makes it likely that Tea Party organizations will be mounting opposition to tobacco control (and other health) policies as they have done in the USA."

Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity are both multi-issue organizations that have expanded their battles to include other policies they see as threats to the free market principles they claim to defend, namely fighting health care reform and regulations on global warming pollution. The report's warning about overseas expansion efforts by Freedomworks should therefore also be heeded by groups in the health and environment arenas.

Finally, this report might serve as a wake-up call to some people in the Tea Party itself, who would find it a little disturbing that the "grassroots" movement they are so emotionally attached to, is in fact a pawn created by billionaires and large corporations with little interest in fighting for the rights of the common person, but instead using the common person to fight for their own unfettered profits. 




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/final-proof-the-tea-party_b_4136722.html

Final Proof The Tea Party Was Founded As A Bogus AstroTurf Movement
Eric Zuesse,
Investigative historian
Posted: 10/22/2013

Here is a screenshot of the Kochs' 2002 introduction of their "Tea Party," with a quotation from the original Tea Party's leader, Sam Adams, back in 1773: [See this website for all graphics]

The Koch-founded-and-run Citizens for a Sound Economy (shown there as running this "Tea Party") subsequently divided itself into two parts: FreedomWorks, and Americans For Prosperity. Both parts ardently pushed the Tea Party "movement" (which didn't yet exist).

Then, on November 8, 2006, their coming website was announced specifically in Chicago, as the "Sam Adams Alliance":

November 8, 2006

Dear Friend,

It has certainly been a momentous year in politics. Across the country, as politicians and rogue judges have blatantly disregarded the will of the people--on spending, on property rights, on the size and scope of government and more--millions of citizens responded by taking matters into their own hands to put meaningful, substantial reforms on the ballot in several states.

While we certainly have a long way to go, it's inspiring to know that this is the beginning of a larger movement to restore citizen control of government. As such, we are pleased and proud to announce the formation of two new organizations: the Sam Adams Alliance and its partner C3 organization, the Sam Adams Foundation.

Those of you who were able to join us at the inaugural Action Conference in Chicago this August heard a lot of talk about Sam Adams. Activist of the year Mary Adams described him as a true citizen leader, known for his courage, dedication, and his keen ability to "set brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." Most importantly, he recognized that true change begins and ends with strong citizen networks and the recognition of individual talents and strengths.

The Sam Adams Alliance has been formed to take the mission of empowering local volunteers and citizen networks to the next level. We believe that the government should serve the citizens, not the other way around. We also believe that the greatest resource in this fight is people. Because of this, our primary aim is to empower those who seek a more limited, accountable government, helping them to form freestanding, effective, and lasting networks in states across the nation.

This project is about learning from local leaders, forging new alliances, and providing support, connections, and services so that local groups can grow and flourish. Local volunteers and leaders are the paramount players in ensuring that the government is limited and accountable to the people. It is our hope that the Sam Adams Alliance will provide a multiplier effect so that these leaders can connect, share ideas, unite, and win.

We aim, in short, to be the premier networking station for citizen volunteers, donors, and local leaders who want to make real change and put citizens back in charge of government.

Our time with Americans for Limited Government has been rewarding, and has taught us valuable lessons. It has also laid the groundwork for what we believe is the necessary next step towards a citizen movement with true staying power. We wish ALG the best in their new office in Fairfax, Virginia as well as in their continued work for greater liberty across the country.

Expect to hear more from us over the next few months. We hope that you will join us in uniting citizens across the country...so that they can light a few brushfires of their own.

Best wishes,

Eric O'Keefe, Chairman & CEO
John Tillman, President & COO
The Sam Adams Alliance

The Sam Adams Alliance's CEO, Eric O'Keefe, was described by sourcewatch as having "deep ties to the Koch brothers. He helped launch the American Majority Tea Party group which trains right-wing candidates to run for office. He sits on the Board of Directors of Club for Growth Wisconsin, which ran divisive ads [heavily funded by the Kochs] in support of [Republican] Governor Scott Walker's radical overhaul of collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin workers. He has also served on the board of Koch's Institute for Humane Studies" and other Koch-funded organizations.

The Alliance's co-founder, John Tillman, is now the CEO of Chicago's Illinois Policy Institute, which was started in 2002. IPI's focus is described as "free market principles." Sourcewatch has shown that IPI is itself deeply tied to the Koch "nonprofit" money operation, including the American Legislative Exchange Council, and also the Cato Institute (Cato, for example, having donated $50,000 to IPI in 2006).

During the closing years of George W.Bush's presidency, the Sam Adams Alliance actively educated (or propagandized) their followers, including a "Meetup with Americans For Prosperity-Illinois" on December 19, 2007.

The Sam Adams Alliance's "Sam Adams Project" was profiled in a blog at The New York Times on July 19, 2008, which noted the project's ties to the Kochs' Americans For Prosperity.

Then, Barack Obama was elected president, and The Sam Adams Alliance (still only a Chicago organization) advertised for unpaid workers or "interns" to "apply through the Koch program": The extremely conservative Rick Santelli was on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange during this time, on 19 February 2009, telling CNBC's very conservative audience that Obama's proposed economic stimulus caused America's Founders to be "rolling over in their graves," and at 2:12 in the video, he urges that there be a "Chicago tea party in July," but he does not actually mention the "Tea Party," nor does he mention by name Sam Adams.

Finally, the Kochs' own astroturf "grass roots movement" became very public and active at the Koch-created FreedomWorks: unmistakably, this is the "Tea Party Movement" as we know it. Notice that the URL shown here says "iamwithrick," which means "I am with Rick Santelli." In other words: it means that FreedomWorks was serving as a national megaphone for Rick Santelli's rant.

The Illinois "campaign" was the first of the "federal and state campaigns" to go public, but that operation might have been a trial run for a federal campaign. In any case, since the very same person, Brian Steinhauser, was atop all of the campaigns, both "federal and state," there clearly was coordination on a national level; and the seed money (and much of the subsequent funding) for FreedomWorks came from the Kochs.

As Mark Ames and Yasha Levine first reported in February of 2009, less than a month after the start of Obama's presidency, this "Tea Party" (not even generally heard of, at that time) was actually no "grass roots movement," but was instead a large-scale operation of the Kochs and of their billionaire friends. (Ames and Levine published this report on their own news site, because no major "news" medium would publish it.)

The basic theory behind this Tea Party "movement" was first clearly publicly stated by then-congressman Jim DeMint (R-SC) in the New Yorker on February 19, 2001. Nicholas Lemann wrote that DeMint told him "Today fewer and fewer people pay taxes, and more and more are dependent on government. ... Every day, the Republican Party is losing constituents, because every day more people vote themselves more benefits without paying for it." The goal of the "Tea Party," therefore, at least from the standpoint of the people (such as DeMint, now the head of the Heritage Foundation) who created it, is to loosen the bond between voters and government, by privatizing Social Security, Medicare, public schools, and other social programs. And the best way to force that to happen is to starve government of funds for such programs. (For public education, another means was private school vouchers, which would transfer some students into parochial and other private schools, thus ending teachers' unions.)

As LeMann himself put this, "A program of tax cuts stretching out over many years would make it more difficult for the Democrats to launch new programs that would increase voters' loyalty to them. All these changes would have the collateral benefit of strengthening Republican interest groups, like stockbrokers." (Private schools are also a Republican interest group; and there are, of course, many others, not just "stockbrokers.")

This analysis, promoting class warfare by aristocrats against everyone else (i.e., against the people who rely on those social programs), was developed by DeMint at greater length soon afterward in a lecture on May 8, 2001 at the Heritage Foundation, an organization that had been established in the late 1970s by Richard Mellon Scaife, Joseph Coors, and a few other dedicated True Believing aristocrats. Coors, in fact, was the head of Ronald Reagan's "kitchen cabinet" before Reagan became the U.S. President and obtained an official cabinet. As I have documented recently, the Kochs started in 2002 to pour millions into the Heritage Foundation, and this money funnel to Heritage continued up till very recently, when Jim DeMint was basically running the Tea Party from his perch there, and was even choosing the people, like Ted Cruz, to be funded into Congress so as to carry out the "Tea Party" operation. The Kochs and their friends have heavily funded the "electoral" campaigns of all of these operatives - including of DeMint himself, while he was in Congress, and now atop Heritage.

A much more extensive historical account of the origins of the "Tea Party Movement" can be found in three earlier reports that I did.

This is "democracy" in today's United States. The agenda of the Republican Supreme Court in Citizens United, etc., is to increase this "democracy" by removing the limits on campaign finance. Instead of one person one vote, we are increasingly moving toward one dollar one vote, which will leave the 1 percent of who own almost everything owning the government too. But is that democracy? Or is it fascism? And do Republicans and other conservatives know the difference between the two? And do non-conservatives even care whether they do? Because that's what we're getting more of, even if Republicans, or even liberals, don't care about it - and maybe evenbecause they don't care about it.

Many journalists care so little about it so that, for example, Jacob Weisberg, the Chairman and Editor in Chief of the Slate Group, in a October 13, 2011 article titled"Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party: Compare and Contrast," opened: "The Tea Party movement began on Feb. 19, 2009, when Rick Santelli, the CNBC financial journalist who reports from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, ranted against the government bailing out homeowners who couldn't pay their mortgages." He portrayed both groups as grassroots movements. He closed: "As spontaneous, unpredictable movements, ... they have more in common than meets the eye." Some in the press, such as Rupert Murdoch, cooperate knowingly with the Kochs and their friends. Others do it because ... because what? Is there an excuse for that? Should it even be called by the name "journalism"? Or perhaps instead: "propaganda." 

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and ofCHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.





http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/25/tea-party-koch-brothers

The Tea Party movement: deluded and inspired by billionaires
George Monbiot
Monday 25 October 2010

By funding numerous rightwing organisations, the mega-rich Koch brothers have duped millions into supporting big business

The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has seen – and the biggest Astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related.

An Astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests. Some Astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all. Others catalyse and direct real mobilisations. The Tea Party belongs in the second category. It is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think they are fighting elite power, unaware that they have been organised by the very interests they believe they are confronting. We now have powerful evidence that the movement was established and has been guided with the help of money from billionaires and big business. Much of this money, as well as much of the strategy and staffing, were provided by two brothers who run what they call "the biggest company you've never heard of".

Charles and David Koch own 84% of Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the United States. It runs oil refineries, coal suppliers, chemical plants and logging firms, and turns over roughly $100bn a year; the brothers are each worth $21bn. The company has had to pay tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements for oil and chemical spills and other industrial accidents. The Kochs want to pay less tax, keep more profits and be restrained by less regulation. Their challenge has been to persuade the people harmed by this agenda that it's good for them.

In July 2010, David Koch told New York magazine: "I've never been to a Tea Party event. No one representing the Tea Party has ever even approached me." But a fascinating new film – (Astro)Turf Wars, by Taki Oldham – tells a fuller story. Oldham infiltrated some of the movement's key organising events, including the 2009Defending the American Dream summit, convened by a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP). The film shows David Koch addressing the summit. "Five years ago," he explains, "my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity. It's beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organisation."

A convener tells the crowd how AFP mobilised opposition to Barack Obama's healthcare reforms. "We hit the button and we started doing the Twittering and Facebook and the phonecalls and the emails, and you turned up!" Then a series of AFP organisers tell Mr Koch how they have set up dozens of Tea Party events in their home states. He nods and beams from the podium like a chief executive receiving rosy reports from his regional sales directors. Afterwards, the delegates crowd into AFP workshops, where they are told how to run further Tea Party events.

Americans for Prosperity is one of several groups set up by the Kochs to promote their politics. We know their foundations have given it at least $5m, but few such records are in the public domain and the total could be much higher. It has toured the country organising rallies against healthcare reform and the Democrats' attempts to tackle climate change. It provided the key organising tools that set the Tea Party running.

The movement began when CNBC's Rick Santelli called from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a bankers' revolt against the undeserving poor. (He proposed that the traders should hold a tea party to dump derivative securities in Lake Michigan to prevent Obama's plan to "subsidise the losers": by which he meant people whose mortgages had fallen into arrears.) On the same day, Americans for Prosperity set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organising Tea Party events.

Oldham's film shows how AFP crafted the movement's messages and drafted its talking points. The New Yorker magazine, in the course of a remarkable exposure of the Koch brothers' funding networks, interviewed some of their former consultants. "The Koch brothers gave the money that founded [the Tea Party]," one of them explained. "It's like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud – and they're our candidates!" Another observed that the Kochs are smart. "This rightwing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves."

AFP is one of several groups established by the Koch brothers. They set up the Cato Institute, the first free-market thinktank in the United States. They also founded the Mercatus Centre at George Mason University, which now fills the role once played by the economics department at Chicago University as the originator of extreme neoliberal ideas. Fourteen of the 23 regulations that George W Bush put on his hitlist were, according to the Wall Street Journal, first suggested by academics working at the Mercatus Centre.

The Kochs have lavished money on more than 30 other advocacy groups, including the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the George C Marshall Institute, the Reason Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. These bodies have been instrumental in turning politicians away from environmental laws, social spending, taxing the rich and distributing wealth. They have shaped the widespread demand for small government. The Kochs ensure that their money works for them. "If we're going to give a lot of money," David Koch explained to a libertarian journalist, "we'll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent. And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don't agree with, we withdraw funding."

Most of these bodies call themselves "free-market thinktanks", but their trick – as (Astro)Turf Wars points out – is to conflate crony capitalism with free enterprise, and free enterprise with personal liberty. Between them they have constructed the philosophy that informs the Tea Party movement: its members mobilise for freedom, unaware that the freedom they demand is freedom for corporations to trample them into the dirt. The thinktanks that the Kochs have funded devise the game and the rules by which it is played; Americans for Prosperity coaches and motivates the team.

Astroturfing is now taking off in the United Kingdom. Earlier this month Spinwatch showed how a fake grassroots group set up by health insurers helped shape the Tories' NHS reforms. Billionaires and corporations are capturing the political process everywhere; anyone with an interest in democracy should be thinking about how to resist them. Nothing is real any more. Nothing is as it seems.

A fully referenced version of this story can be found at www.monbiot.com





http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/11/1186268/-Koch-Planning-Tea-Party-Since-2002-New-Research-Paper-Reveals

Koch Planning Tea Party Since 2002, New Research Paper Reveals
KGrandia
MON FEB 11, 2013

Shattering the public perception that the Tea Party is a spontaneous popular citizens movement, a new academic paper provides evidence that an organization founded by David and Charles Koch, attempted to launch the Tea Party movement in 2002.  

The peer-reviewed study appearing in the academic journal, Tobacco Control and titled, 'To quarterback behind the scenes, third party efforts': the tobacco industry and the Tea Party, shows that the group Citizens for a Sound Economy launched a Tea Party movement website, www.usteaparty.com, that went live in 2002.

According to the website DeSmogBlog.com, who broke this story earlier today, CSE was founded in 1984 by the infamous Koch Brothers, David and Charles Koch in 1984. David Koch sat on the board of CSE for many years and the group's first president, Richard Fink, went on to become a senior VP at Koch Industries.

The common public understanding of the origins of the Tea Party is that it is a popular grassroots uprising that began with anti-tax protests in 2009.

Here's a screenshot of the archived U.S. Tea Party site, as it appeared online on Sept. 13, 2002: [See website for graphics]

The site is described as, "In 2002, our U.S. Tea Party is a national event, hosted continuously online, and open to all Americans who feel our taxes are too high and the tax code is too complicated." There is also "Patriot Guest book" available for visitors to voice their support and write a message for CSE and the U.S. Tea Party movement.

The US Tea Party site is no longer online and appears to have been taken down sometime in mid-2011. A DNS registry search, finds that the web address www.usteaparty.com is currently owned by Freedomworks, an organization heavily involved in Tea Party organizing today.

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO KGRANDIA ON MON FEB 11, 2013 AT 09:39 AM PST.
ALSO REPUBLISHED BY CLIMATE HAWKS AND AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE TRANSPARENCY PROJECT.