GOP Pacs Making Money Off IRS ‘Scandal’
GOP Pacs are making money from the IRS ‘scandal’ and they’re doing it in the name of the “tea party”
An interesting article is floating around the internet.
Quoted from it is this about Jenny Beth Martin, self-described “tea party” leader of a DC-based lobbying group known as Tea Party Patriots:
“At the national headquarters of Tea Party Patriots, one of the largest umbrella groups, head Jenny Beth Martin presided over empty desks and dwindling volunteer and donor rolls. It was “frightening,” she tells the Wall Street Journal in a new profile of the conservative grass-roots leader out today.”
The reason it was frightening we suspect, is that Martin and her staff and other GOP consultants depend on huge salaries paid by millions of dollars fleeced from an unsuspecting public who have been misguided into giving these and other groups credit for starting the movement in 2009.[1] Unbeknownst to most of the TPP’s donors, the movement was actually started by libertarians in 2007 an was not funded by any large benefactor or associated with the GOP in any way. To this day we are not represented by Martin’s group, who seem to be more consumed by being media hounds than actually doing any effective activism.
Further it was written:
“Then, like a ray of sunlight piercing through the clouds, came the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal and the perception (that later turned out to be largely false) that the tax agency politically targeted tea party groups. “From that moment, the tea party has roared back to life,” Martin told the Journal. Soon, her staff doubled, donations tripled, and she now has to subsist on three hours of sleep most nights just to keep up with work and media requests for interviews.”
While we disagree that the issue with the IRS (the much-maligned agency which is viewed by us as the collection arm of the Federal Reserve) was “false” and they did indeed target conservative groups, we wonder, what would motivate anyone to send money to a GOP PAC on that basis? Recall that ending the IRS, not merely auditing the IRS, (along with end the Fed, end the wars, and restore personal freedoms) was one of the lynchpin issues of the tea party when it was formed during the Bush administration on December 16, in 2007. But these 2009 groups never mentioned a word about the IRS until recently. Even now they are only advocating for an “auditing”.
While Martin (paid a salary of $72K/yr), as well as other well-paid GOP consultant “leaders” (Meckler, Phillips, Russo, Kremer (paid a salary of $50K), and Cefaratti (who raised $450K which mysteriously disappeared, etc) may have succeeded in leading the public to think the tea party was their idea in 2009, Russo (who made $800,00 in 2010) has stated openly that his group’s job was to water down the movement; he once expressed the opinion that his job was to get them to compromise.[2]
Rest assured NH, these folks don’t work for us. So if you do send them money, it goes to Martin’s traveling fees, consultant fees, office expenses, and in some cases candidates that you would never even support. Very little of it actually goes to activism, or to any real grassroots tea party. In NH, in keeping with the original movement, we do not work on behalf of campaigns.
A true “movement” does not collect millions of dollars to set up a lobbying office in the belly of the beast in DC. (Witness the saying, “you become what you hate”) And frankly, we’re quite tired of being accused of having been founded, or funded, by the “Koch Brothers” who were not anywhere to be found on that day in 2007. Our members know that all our work in NH is still done by dedicated unpaid volunteers.
Oh and about that IRS “scandal”. Call us hardcore, but someone needs to tell Martin that legitimate movements do not share their financial information with the IRS.
[1] 5 Professional Tea Partiers: Who’s Sucking the Most Money from the Movement?
[2] From the NYT: Unlike many of the newly energized outsiders who have embraced Tea Party ideals, Mr. Russo, 63, is a longtime Republican operative who got his start as an aide to Ronald Reagan and later raised money and managed media strategy for a string of other politicians, including former Gov. George E. Pataki of New York. His history and spending practices have prompted some former employees and other Tea Party activists to question whether he is committed to, or merely exploiting, their cause.
Mr. Russo’s group, based in California, is now the single biggest independent supporter of Tea Party candidates, raising more than $5.2 million in donations since January 2009, according to federal records. But at least $3 million of that total has since been paid to Mr. Russo’s political consulting firm or to one controlled by his wife, according to federal records.
“Here is the plan I’ve been cooking up in my head,” Mr. Wierzbicki wrote in an e-mail to Mr. Russo. “About how we really make a big impact with the 2010 elections coming up, on the heels of the successful Tea Party push on April 15, and my desire to give a boost to our PAC and position us as a growing force/leading force.”
Mr. Russo estimated that Russo & Marsh, and his wife’s company, King Media Group, had been paid about $250,000 a year for their work with the Tea Party cause.