Tag Archives: FreedomWorks

February 15, 2013 · 7:50 AM

Arizona Tea Party Leader Scraps ‘Be Mein’ Hitler Valentines

We’re still sorting out the crazies…

TPM Livewire

Stephen Viramontes, the interim state director of the tea party group FreedomWorks in Arizona, canceled plans to distribute Valentine’s Day cards to lawmakers featuring various dictators who opposed anti-union legislation — but not before tweeting about the cards, the Arizona Capitol Times reports.

Viramontes deleted those tweets, but not before the Times published them.

Viramontes explained who would be getting the cards in a second tweet, which was also deleted. “All those needing some help in supporting and passing #PaycheckProtection,” he wrote.

According to the Capitol Times, other cards featured Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong as well as Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky. Viramontes told the Times that FreedomWorks is planning a big push for legislation that will limit the ability of public sector unions to collect money from their members for use in political efforts.

This ill-fated Valentine’s Day stint comes on the same day that Mother Jones reported that FreedomWorks executives in Washington, D.C. made a video — which they almost showed at a tea party conference — in which a fake panda performs oral sex on a woman impersonating then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

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December 14, 2012 · 3:21 AM

Rachel Maddow: Conservatism Riddled With Scams And Rackets (video)

Rachel Maddow reviews the many ways the conservative movement is rife with scammers who are more interested in making a buck off the fear and paranoia of conservative media audiences than they are in crafting a cogent political arguments.

 

 

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December 11, 2012 · 10:26 AM

Rachel Maddow Rips Conservative Media For Scamming Donors

Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow has no qualms about exposing the underbelly of the Right-Wing Super PAC scamming business and the Right-Wing media’s compliance.  This woman is awesome.  No wonder she’s beating brain dead Hannity in the ratings.

The Huffington Post

Rachel Maddow tore into members of the conservative media on her Monday MSNBC show for what she called “scamming” gullible members of their own party who donate to various Super PACs.

Maddow discussed how watchdog group Media Matters recently looked into conservative pundit Dick Morris’ Super PAC and found that some of his key expenditures included renting his own email list, which is operated by Newsmax Media.

“So your money … goes to Dick Morris, who apparently then pays it to Newsmax to send emails, and then Newsmax maybe just pays it back to Dick Morris to pay for the email addresses to which they just sent all of his emails,” Maddow said. “What these financial reports seems to indiciate is that donations to Dick Morris’ Super PAC substantially end up just going to Dick Morris.” She added that Morris’ Super PAC has been around for a couple of years “so maybe it doesn’t always look like a scam,” but that more and more “scammy-looking” arrangements have been coming to light — as in the case of the well funded Tea Party group Freedom Works.

Dick Armey, the man who helped build the conservative group, recently left and arranged an $8 million golden parachute for himself upon his departure, which raised some eyebrows. Then news broke that Freedom Works president Matt Kibbe allegedly used the group’s staff and funds to write part of his book. “So if you think about it, anyone donating to Freedom Works was effectively paying for the staff time and the resources to produce a project that just personally profited one of the people who works there,” Maddow said. “A scam.”

Maddow likened the situation to what she called Newt Gingrich’s “direct mail scam,” where he would give businesses fake awards, which gave them the opportunity to donate $5,000 to meet him. “Congratulations to you!” Maddow quipped. “Where is your check to me?”

She also compared the situation to what she called the “scammy campaign” where Mike Huckabee asked supporters to donate $2,500 to “help fund the battle” against Obamacare, which also went towards helping to keep Huckabee on TV to repeal Obamacare.

“Will having Mike Huckabee on TV repeal Obamacare? I’m checking with the constitution, but I don’t think so,” Maddow said. She later added, “If you are a person who has long been fascinated by how similar the conservative ‘be afraid’ direct mail that asks for money looks to the kind of direct mail that tries to scam your grandmother out of her savings … it is amazing to see, if you have been watching this over time … is how persistent this is.”

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December 7, 2012 · 12:54 PM

Who had the worst week in Washington? The tea party.

It couldn’t happen to a more deserving political group…

The Washington Post

The Gadsden flag is flying at half-staff this past week.

The tea party — that plucky insurgent movement that, as recently as two years ago, began trying to reshape the Republican Party and politics more generally — finds itself flailing as 2012 draws to a close, buffeted by infighting, defeats and a broad struggle to find a second act.

Consider the following:

●Tea party patron saint Jim DeMint stunned the political world by announcing that he would resign from the Senate at the end of the year to take a job as the head of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

●FreedomWorks, a Washington-based political group that is one of the pillars of the tea party movement, has been rent by internal strife. It was announced this past week that former Texas congressman Dick Armey is leaving as head of the group, alleging mismanagement.

●Tea-party-aligned House members, including Reps. Tim Huelskamp (Kan.), Justin Amash (Mich.) and David Schweikert (Ariz.), were kicked off coveted committees after not going along with GOP leaders on several critical votes.

Couple those developments with poll results that suggest the tea party is at, or close to, its nadir in terms of public opinion, and the problem becomes evident. The movement needs to decide whether it can survive as an outside force or whether it can become more aligned with the GOP without sacrificing the principles on which it was founded.

The tea party, for watching a movement turn into a mess, you had the worst week in Washington. Congrats, or something.

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May 31, 2011 · 3:13 PM

“Tell Us What To Say” – Tea Party Group Gives GOP Freshmen Medicare Talking Points

So, what sort of power does a group like the Tea Party have over members of the House and Senate?  Could it be Corporate and special interests who are looking for members of both houses in Congress to tow the free market line?  

The wealthiest corporations and special interest groups usually pepper politicians with overwhelming amounts of money in hope of influencing the political process.   

It’s the same way with the Tea Party which is backed by the likes of Koch Industries and other corporate interests.

Huffington Post

FreedomWorks Gives Freshman Republicans Tips For Dealing With Medicare At Town Halls

The conservative group FreedomWorks has a message for freshman Republicans in Congress: Do not shy away from the Medicare fight.

On May 24, the group run by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey convened one of its regular off-the-record meetings with “communicators from limited-government conservative offices in the House and Senate who have a close relationship with the grassroots,” according to an email from FreedomWorks’ Media Coordinator Jackie Bodnar obtained by The Huffington Post. The email was intended for attendees of the breakfast meeting.

The main topics of discussion, according to notes attached to the email that recapped the meeting, were the debt ceiling and Medicare. The special guest that day was Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who argued, according to the recap, that the “debt ceiling has become a key bargaining chip that can be used to get the BBA [balanced budget amendment] passed.”

Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, focused on Medicare and gave the congressional offices tips for dealing with the hot topic in their districts (emphasis added):

  • Get out there and talk to people. Hold town halls at senior centers and other areas where the population is especially concerned about their benefits being cut. Take the lessons of ’94 and ’95 and get out there and explain to people that their immediate benefits will not be affected. Explaining the plan will offset confusion and the Democrats’ negative messaging.
  • We need to dispel the myth that if we leave Medicare alone it will stay the same. It won’t. By reforming them we are saving and strengthening these programs for the current and future generations.
  • Don’t bury your head in the sand. Republicans must not shy away from this issue. Expect Democrats to attack, but not fighting back will only makes it worse. BOLD action is needed.
  • Communicate that Democrats do not have a plan of their own. Hold up a blank piece of paper as a powerful image of their do-nothing approach.
  • Stick to your message.

Continue reading here…

 

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February 10, 2011 · 4:17 AM

Texas Tea Party Leader On Obama: He “Might Be Muslim”

Think Progress

On MSNBC [yesterday] evening, Chris Matthews hosted two representatives of the Tea Party to analyze its influence in Washington: FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe and Phillip Dennis of the Texas Tea Party. Matthews asked Dennis if he thought President Obama is a Muslim, and Dennis immediately launched into a diatribe that ranged from offensive to confusing, but was outlandishly dishonest throughout. He first replied that he “didn’t know” if Obama was a Muslim, but then criticized Obama’s attendance in the Christian church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dennis then complained that Obama has a “soft spot in his heart” for Islam because he “changed our history saying that Islam has always played a major party in this country.” Dennis noted he had a “big problem with Islam” and concluded by saying Obama “might be Muslim”:

DENNIS: One thing is that President Obama certainly has a soft spot in his heart for Islam. You know, he’s gone back — his first speech was in Egypt, he’s reached out to the Muslims moreso than any other President in the history of the world. He’s even changed our history saying that Islam has always played a major part in this country, when everyone knows that’s not true. You didn’t see our Founding Fathers — weren’t Muslim, they weren’t breaking for prayers five times a day. But this is the type of thing that he’s done, is reaching out. Bowing to the leaders —

MATTHEWS: Where are you on Islam?

DENNIS: … Oh, I have a big problem with Islam. I think that it, uh, they call itself the religion of peace, when every day around the world it continues to show itself to be anything but. So I think those people have a right, certainly it’s understandable that they might have a problem that our President might be Muslim. Absolutely.

Read More…

Watch:

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October 7, 2010 · 1:24 AM

The Tea Party Candidates Are Religious Extremists Obsessed With Sex, Abortion, Religion — Why Doesn’t the Media Get That?

The only answer I can think of is that our media is run by a few corporations and the tea party is run by lobbyists for corporations.  The most prominent tea party corporate backers are Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity.  Since most corporations and their lobbyists respect the “Corporate culture” I imagine that there is a will full ignorance on the part of the media to be honest about the motives of the current crop of “tea party” candidates.

As PR Watch.org reports:

The Guardian notes the cashroots behind right-wing Astroturf: “When Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, FreedomWorks studied how he did it and then copied him. … A plethora of groups have jumped on board, with exotic names such as Tea Party Patriots, Grassfire, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, 60 Plus, all loosely working together, with FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity probably the leading partners. … FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity are sister groups who came from the same parent body — a campaign called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which split in two in 2004. It was set up by one of America’s richest men, David Koch, an oil tycoon who has funded rightwing causes for decades.

Alter Net

Why doesn’t the media understand that the Tea Parties are not just about “fiscal responsibility?”

The answer quite obviously is no. Over the past several months, as Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Rand Paul, Joe Miller, Pat Toomey and other mad-hatters have stumped for office, I have listened and read in disbelief as one after another otherwise respected media representative or outlet continues to suggest that the Tea Party is not interested in “social conservative issues.”

The corporate media–I don’t know whether to describe it as mainstream, midstream or up a creek without a paddle–still persists in mis-reading and misrepresenting the broader context of what is happening in the 2010 elections. (I am not talking about Fox News and other known sources of persistent misinformation). Yes, reporting is done on the extremist positions of individual candidates, but virtually every broader analysis describing the Tea Party “movement,” such as it is, continues to ignore or outright deny the extremist positions take by those candidates as representative of said movement.

Two weeks ago, for example, David Greene, a host on NPR’s All Things Considered interviewed New York Times reporter Kate Zernike, whose new book about the Tea Party, Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America had just been published. 

Continue reading…

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October 6, 2010 · 11:12 PM

Dick Armey Wants To Completely Eliminate Any Federal Funding For Higher Education

Dick Armey

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Think Progress

Last night, FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey appeared on CNN’s Parker Spitzer to advocate for his conservative views and the tea party. Armey explained that he wants to inject tea party values into mainstream American political culture and wants its politics to define the modern Republican Party.

At one point, Spitzer asked Armey a series of questions about what he thinks the government should and should not be involved in funding to try to “add texture” to what the FreedomWorks chairman believes. During this question period, the CNN host asked Armey if he would “have the federal government pay for higher education?” Armey bluntly responded, “No, I would not.” He then went on to say that the university system of his home state of Texas has “not been made any better by federal money involvement:”

SPITZER: Would you have the federal government pay for higher education?

ARMEY: No I would not.

SPITZER: You would not have any funding?

ARMEY: No. I don’t think the federal government’s involvement in education has benefited the students of America.

PARKER: Wait a minute, finish that thought if you don’t mind.

ARMEY: The federal government has the military academies and it’s an important thing they should continue to do that. But the education of our young people oughta be under the jurisdiction and auspices of the state governments. The state of Texas has a great university system that has not been made any better by federal money involvement.

SPITZER: So you would rip out all the money that goes to the universities and say let the states increase their taxes to pay for it.

ARMEY: Let the states manage the education of their young people.   Continue reading…

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