Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaire Koch Brothers

[Fire Walk With Me]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brendan-demelle/study-confirms-tea-party-_b_2663125.html

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:

(More at the link.)

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. The Kochs directly funded the "tea party". "tea party" republicans are partly responsible for our

problems, even for the dictatorial "emergency manager" smash-and-grabs in Michigan, soon to be used elsewhere.

The Koch brothers are directly linked to political take-over.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

2. +1 n/t

[Initech]

3. The Kochs won't be satisfied until they're made dictators of America.

[Fire Walk With Me]

4. Would RICO or any other law make it illegal for them to have their own politicians? n/t

[hay rick]

5. Good cross-post.

Occupy post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/12526003

Democrats should have this information at their finger tips. K&R

[MoreGOPoop]

6. May visions of

guillotines dance in their heads.

[UTUSN]

7. There's a BIG JOKE in the article, that the 'Baggers MIGHT LEARN they are pawns

of Fatcats who are NOT interested in them/"the Common Man," but only in Fatcat advantages. Like the 'Baggers would actually LEARN anything.