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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLeaked internal docs blow the lid off Tea Party group's image (FreedomWorks)
FreedomWorks, the national conservative group that helped launch the tea party movement, sells itself as a genuine grassroots operation, and for years it has battled accusations of "astroturfing"posing as a populist organization while doing the bidding of big-money donors. Yet internal documents obtained by Mother Jones show that FreedomWorks has indeed become dependent on wealthy individual donors to finance its growing operation.
Last month, the Washington Post reported that Richard Stephenson, a reclusive millionaire banker and FreedomWorks board member, and members of his family funneled $12 million in October through two newly created Tennessee corporations to FreedomWorks' super-PAC, which used these funds to support tea party candidates in November's elections. The revelation that a corporate bigwig like Stephenson, who founded the Cancer Treatment Centers of America and chairs its board, was responsible for more than half of the FreedomWorks super-PAC's haul in 2012 undercuts the group's grassroots image and hands ammunition to critics who say FreedomWorks does the bidding of rich conservative donors.
Big donations like Stephenson's are business as usual for FreedomWorks. According to a 52-page report prepared by FreedomWorks' top brass for a board of directors meeting held in mid-December at the Virginia office of Sands Capital Management, an investment firm run by FreedomWorks board member Frank Sands, the entire FreedomWorks organizationits 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) nonprofit arms and its super-PACraised nearly $41 million through mid-December. Of that total, $33 millionor 81 percent of its 2012 fundraisingcame in the form of "major gifts," the type of big donations coveted by nonprofits and super-PACs. (FreedomWorks' nonprofit components do not have to disclose their funders.)
(scroll down the page to read docs)
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/freedomworks-rich-donors-armey-kibbe-super-pac
Freedom Works does neither.
Arctic Dave
(13,812 posts)This explains a lot.
Another multi-million dollar scammer.
DollarBillHines
(1,922 posts)I heard one yesterday and thought "WTF?". The slots promoted CTCofA as pretty much The Benevolent Being.
Trying to buy some warm-and-fuzzy counter-time, I suppose.
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)Guy Whitey Corngood
(26,512 posts)Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)I actually think the media gives them a pass by calling them the "tea party". They're actually just Republicans that branded themselves "tea party patriots" when they became angry that a black man was in the white house.
Plucketeer
(12,882 posts)Damned librul media tries it's BEST to keep the TP on life support. That slug-slime "operation" evaporated with it's failings last November. But just because some of the dweebs that the TP advocated for are still in office - to the media, that's justification to keep the piss-yellow flags of "Don't pee on me!" waving vigorously.
Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)Tippy
(4,610 posts)BainsBane
(53,127 posts)Tippy
(4,610 posts)No Compromise
(373 posts)then use the money to pretend they are a grassroots group in an attempt to subvert our Democracy for their own greedy purposes?
Sarah Ibarruri
(21,043 posts)BainsBane
(53,127 posts)made obvious to those who didn't already know better that Freedom Works doesn't rely on grassroots funding.
Botany
(70,639 posts)..... from really scared people. They now have to put in fine print that
the cases they are talking about are not typical.
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)There was a factional war going on within the tea party at launch. Freedom works was one of the biggest, but inimical to Tea Party Express, (the Fox/Beck/Palin wing) and the Paulbots (Tea Party Patriots? I can't even keep track now.)
The whole thing and how it unfolded might make a good study in socially transmitted diseases.
Melinda
(5,465 posts)His severance package, if you will. I understand that an FEC AND DOJ investigation has been requested. Link to FEC and DOJ Complaints: http://tinyurl.com/auxds4u
Now we hurry up and wait for the results.
patrice
(47,992 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)patrice
(47,992 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)But I thought everyone with a brain in their head already knew their image was shite.
Buncha astroturfin theocratic fascist hypocrites was the image I've long associated with them.
This actually just reinforces that image.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)They would have been the ones calling for Washington to be hanged as a Revolutionary when caught.
MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)Last edited Sat Jan 5, 2013, 01:19 AM - Edit history (1)
They hate the Constitution and Bill of Rights and all those terrible liberal amendments...
Did you see the Freeper post begging the Queen of England to please, please take us back and we'll never be naughty again?
Tea Party Patriots, restoring honor to America!
Uh, better make that honoring royalty...
Easy enough to undertand, since all union-hating repukes are bootlickers, anyway.
MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)You and I...on the same page.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)Nearly sprayed beer everywhere!
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Problem is, they keep running from the light...
MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)Word.
Autumn
(45,120 posts)MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Koch-funded astroturf phonies???
NO!