Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Pollutocrat Kochs

[MindMover]

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.

Published in the peer-reviewed academic journal, Tobacco Control, the study titled, ‘To quarterback behind the scenes, third party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party, is not just an historical account of activities in a bygone era. As senior author, Stanton Glantz, a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) professor of medicine, writes:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/11/1573061/study-confirms-tea-party-was-created-by-big-tobacco-and-pollutocrat-kochs/

[bunnies]

1. No mention of this over at jackass republic.

I wonder why. suckers!

[Kingofalldems]

2. Family Guy had an episode this season on

how the teabaggers are pawns of plutocrats.

[YankeyMCC]

3. I still wonder,

... the people identifying with the tea party clearly are not hearing what they need to hear. I think the real tragedy of this kind of manipulation is that it stops the conversation. The concerns of people are never actually given opportunity to be discussed.

[freshwest]

4. Their spokesman promoted his 'freedom and liberty' to blow smoke in our faces for years (warning):

[underpants]

7. Yep and we know that he was paid cash for his PR work

because Dick Armey thought he was talking to the RW Media Research Center not Media Matters

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/09/dick-armey-media-matters_n_2439469.html

[WillyT]

5. HUGE K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

[SCVDem]

6. In our faces?

I thought it was lower.

[Ford_Prefect]

8. So where the F*#* is the FBI when you really need them???????????????

...or was it another case of "smoke gets in your eyes"?

[Initech]

9. They really needed a study for this? We've long known the Koch roaches were behind this.

[Brother Buzz]

10. Anti-tobacco Gray Davis may have been their first target

The ginned-up California energy crisis that ultimately took Davis down may have been just the catalyst, the excuse, that got everything moving.

In September 2002, Governor Davis signed bills to ensure age verification was obtained for cigarettes and other tobacco products sold over the Internet or through the mail, ensured that all state taxes are being fully paid on tobacco purchases and increased the penalty for possessing or purchasing untaxed cigarettes. He also signed legislation to expand smoke-free zones around public buildings.

The 2003 Gray Davis recall was successful, in part, because of the "Recall Gray Davis Committee," organized by Republican political consultant Sal Russo.

Sal Russo, armed with his famous 'mailing list', went on to co-found the Tea Party Express and sits on a huge double super secret background pile of PAC money.