Why does a fat rat desert its ship?
The Sunlight Foundation, a group that pushes for more transparent politics and policymaking, on Friday reported that federal records show that two mystery companies in September donated over $12 million to the super PAC of FreedomWorks, the tea party-supporting organization that this week was rocked by the abrupt resignation of its chairman, Dick Armey, the former Republican House majority leader. These contributions accounted for more than half of the $23.2 million the group raised for the 2012 campaign, and they came from two shadowy Knoxville-Tennessee-based firms—Specialty Group, Inc., and Pike Development LLC—that publicly have no reason to exist other than apparently to make contributions and mask the true source of the money. Moreover, Armey tells Mother Jones that he knew nothing about the donations or the origins of the cash and that he quit FreedomWorks partly because of a lack of transparency.
After the Sunlight Foundation posted this report—noting that the sources of this funding "remain shadowy"—Mother Jones contacted Armey and asked if he had been aware of these contributions and of where the money came from. He replied, "I know nothing about this."
That seemed odd. He was until last Friday the chair of FreedomWorks. Shouldn't he have been in the loop? "This kind of secrecy is why I left," Armey maintained. He added, "I have never seen anything like this before."
Mother Jones then reached Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks (whom Armey has accused of misappropriating FreedomWorks resources for his own personal benefit), and asked if it was unusual for the chairman of an outfit to be in the dark about half of the group's funding. "Well, we have 81,000 individual donors," Kibbe replied. Indeed, but only two donations that account for over $12 million. Nothing curious about Armey not being in-the-know? "It's not unusual," Kibbe said. He continued: "I don't know about these (donations). It's the first time I've heard." .........(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/12/dick-armey-i-left-freedomworks-partly-because-secrecy
= new reply since forum marked as read
who or what Pike Dev. is... has direct ties to the Koch an Coors families. Just guessing but looking at all the connections the two have going with all the other entities tied to the Freedom Works group of organizations, there are five of those, That would be my guess. To extrapolate a little, I would guess that it is a bundling/money laundering outfit.
Here's a good place to look for info that might bring one to such a conclusion...
http://news.muckety.com/
all the same players are there on that relationship map but you can do a search for Freedom Works and find all the same gang involved... and so much more. Pike Dev. LLC is not known to the site managers or it would be there. Could show up on this site in a few days though.
On edit: to answer your question though, because he's either got a better deal someplace else or he's been threatened. He's playing with a powerful oligarchic cabal and he's chump change.
