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Tea Party documents show it's the toy of a few super wealthy idiots
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/freedomworks-rich-donors-armey-kibbe-super-pac(go to article to see view graphs of board of directors meeting of Freedom Works)
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.)
Well-heeled individual contributors ponied up $31 millionor 94 percentof those major gifts, according to the FreedomWorks board book. Eight donors gave a half-million dollars or more; 22 donated between $100,000 and $499,999; 17 cut checks between $50,000 and $99,999; and 95 gave between $10,000 and $49,999. Foundations contributed $1.6 million in major gifts, and corporations donated $330,000. Corporations once accounted for more of FreedomWorks' hefty donations. In a memo included in the report, David Kirby, FreedomWork's vice president for development, and senior adviser Terry Kibbe wrote, "This year continued our trend of relying less and less on corporate support." At the same time FreedomWorks expanded its small donor ranks from 41,794 in 2011 to 81,081 in 2012. More than 30,000 of those small donors gave between a dollar and $99 this year.
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Tea Party documents show it's the toy of a few super wealthy idiots (Original Post)
Bill USA
Jan 2013
OP
samsingh
(17,594 posts)1. they completely are tools of the rich
and they're too stupid to know it.
zbdent
(35,392 posts)2. They probably do know it ...
they just are more than happy to accept it ... and in fact, love it!
MissMarple
(9,656 posts)3. Very good point.
They think it "elevates" themselves. Pathetic.
Bill USA
(6,436 posts)4. "I can hire half the working class to kill the other half" - Jay Gould, financier, schmuck
Last edited Tue Jan 8, 2013, 08:33 PM - Edit history (1)
liberal N proud
(60,334 posts)5. And the stupid who do their bidding are their game pieces.
DavidDvorkin
(19,473 posts)6. Those few super wealthy people aren't the idiots.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)8. +1. nt
yurbud
(39,405 posts)7. It's astroturf