Who's Paying for Your Tea Party?

I received a phone call today from someone who was concerned about my money and whether or not the government was going to let me keep a hold on it. This person, who was a recording, invited me to an upcoming Tea Party that is sure to be happening in my area soon. In the meantime, I could go to a website to get caught up on what’s going on with the government.

Curiosity got the better of me and I went to the website. Quite impressive. I do web design, and I recognize something that’s been done professionally, and by professionally I mean something that costs a pretty penny.

I asked Google about these Americans for Prosperity, and found out that these guys are heavily funded by the Koch Family Foundations. The Koch Family has extensive holdings in oil and refineries. Ah, I said to myself, now it’s making sense. Of course they’d want government out of their business. We as a nation need to be heading into the future like the rest of the world and get away from our dependency on oil. But if that happens, these guys will lose a lot of money. I guess if I were the Koch family I’d be bellowing like a cow stepping on its own tit if the government was making it more difficult to keep business as usual.

Rich people know they can’t just stand up and say they want to keep their money. Who is going to sympathize with that? So they hire really smart people to make it look like the government is taking away the rights of the people. They know how what scares people, and they use that to make their case.

I’m not a socialist and I don’t like government waste. I don’t like people taking advantage of welfare any more than I like people taking advantage of tax codes. But I do like that our government steps in and says “enough” when people aren’t doing right by others. Who can argue that the government should regulate the safety of coalmines or toxic waste dumps or oil spills? Does anyone want these companies to have free rein when it comes to doing what’s best for all the people instead of the padding the pocketbooks of the wealthy?

It irks me when an organization funded by big money presents itself as a champion of “the people.” The people in this case are regular guys who worry about getting their retirement sucked up by government spending – and especially since some have experienced that already. No wait, that was the rich banking people who sucked up their retirement. Wasn’t that when the government stepped back from regulating? And now a group funded by oil companies wants the government to quit regulating businesses. Weren’t the oil companies the ones making record profits while our economy was going to hell?

Sometimes it’s hard to know who to believe, but here’s a clue: if a group hires Sarah Palin to be a speaker, run like a person with a bad case of the gravies to the crapper, because that woman is full of it. Oh yeah, she may be cute and she may be entertaining, but who can forget that she cost John McCain the Presidency when she decided to be a renegade, and she jumped ship on the State of Alaska after touting what a wonderful governor she was. Besides, she shoots animals from a helicopter. When she was under the gun in Alaska for ethics questions, she tucked tail and ran. Her prey isn’t so lucky. Any idiot who’s been to a shooting range a couple of times can point a gun out a window and kill an animal, especially when the animal has nowhere to run for cover. It’s just not sporting, and it’s even embarrassing. What kind of person brags about that? The kind of person that an organization like Americans for Prosperity would pay upwards of $100,000 to speak for them.

Ask yourself who’s paying for this Tea Party and why. Ask yourself why they’re calling it a Tea Party when it’s nothing like its namesake, the Boston Tea Party? These guys are paying big money to make you think it is. Wonder why?