http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brendan-demelle/study-confirms-tea-party-_b_2663125.html wrote:A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea 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.
More at the link.
Long story short, it's being bankrolled by Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity because the tobacco industry hates getting taxed and having regulations put on their cancer sticks. What's interesting to me is that although they didn't get really popular until 2008, they've had a website as far back as 2002. I had honestly thought the major backers scooped up a fledgling movement because they were pissed about the possibility of a black democrat becoming president. That this has been around for so long, and was the focus of so much planning is downright scary. Even scarier is the apparent fact that they are going international to spread this anti-democracy infection of a "movement" to other countries.
So, what say you NSG? Surprised? Alarmed? Pleased? Indifferent? Hungry?
