Stimulus "Tea Party" Steeped in Deceit

Republican Tea Party Not Like the Original

As I scan through the right-wing blogs that enthusiastically are reporting that the very sparsely attended stimulus tea party somehow constituted a new counter-culture movement, I am laughing hysterically. One thing about your right wing is plainly evident, and this is that facts don't matter. One perfect example is their hysteria about Obama's birthplace. Never mind the fact that his mom was NEVER in Kenya, or that that they completely disregard this item.  When asked, "Does this mean Obama was born in Hawaii"?  "Yes," said Hawaii Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo, in both email and telephone interviews with the Tribune. "That's what Dr. Fukino is saying." Facts don't matter.  They simply disregard them and continue their rants.

Now we have a new rallying point -- a Tea Party.  What are the facts?  CNBC's Rick Santelli's call for a "tea party" in Chicago next summer was quickly picked up by a website called ChicagoTeaParty.com and spread from there to the Drudge Report. However, the ChicagoTeaParty.com domain is not new. It was registered last summer by the producer of a right-wing radio show in Chicago and, the writers allege, is one of several tied to the anti-tax group FreedomWorks, which is among the sponsors of the current protests.

FreedomWorks is the latest incarnation of an organization formerly known as Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 "to anonymously leverage corporate contributions into debates on public policy." CSE had close ties to Koch Industries and became one of the major recipients of grant money from conservative foundations and major corporations such as Exxon, Philip Morris, and General Motors.

In 2003, CSE's affiliate, the Citizens for a Strong Economy Foundation, split off and renamed itself Americans for Prosperity. (That group is also a sponsor of the current protests.) CSE itself merged the following year with Empower America -- another fake grassroots group created by Republican Party insiders to promote conservative candidates -- and formed FreedomWorks.

Posters at Democratic Underground have found that a number of anti-bailout and anti-stimulus groups are hosted by the dedicated servers of Citizens for a Sound Economy. In addition to cse.org, empoweramerica.org, and freedomworks.com, those servers also host such domains as angryrenter.com (which was registered in March 2008 to oppose bailouts for mortgage holders), destimulus.com, earmarkpledge.com, nowallstreetbailout.com, and usteaparty.com.

Nice spontaneous "tea party".  

source:  RAW STORY

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