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.