Posted on 02/16/2013 12:04:50 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
What this has to do with health is beyond me. Perhaps they are thinking metaphorically; the Tea Party is a cancer on the country, or something.
Regardless, your tax dollars were spent funding a study that purported to show a link between the Tea Party and tobacco companies.
It’s all very academic and complicated — not to mention laughably bogus.
Fox News:
The charge that the Tea Party is a tool of broader corporate interests is one often leveled by Democratic critics. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi was fond of calling the movement “astroturf” in the run-up to the 2010 mid-term elections where Tea Partiers helped Republicans take control of the House.
The research at the University of California-San Francisco echoes the claim, while weaving in an attractive narrative for Tea Party critics — that the Tea Party is continuing the agenda of the tobacco industry.
Tea Party leaders, though, roundly rejected the findings. They argued that the groups the study focused on do not compose the entirety of the movement, and that the tobacco issue is a relatively minor aspect of the present-day small-government agenda.
And they complained that a study that arguably targeted administration critics was funded by taxpayers.
“It’s an example of the frivolous spending inside the government … that has landed us $17 trillion in debt,” said Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin...
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Such "progressives" also reveal their arrogant unwillingness to acknowledge that ordinary citizens, armed with computers, now have begun to read the wisdom writings of earlier centuries, speeches and documents of America's Revolutionary Period (including the ideas which prompted the original "Tea Party"), and that the so-called "progressive" decades-long effort to censor and eliminate those writings from textbooks and public discourse have failed.
Americans are again beginning to assert the enduring ideas and principles underlying their liberty, which means that Gore, Obama, the Clintons, and the academic community which spawned them, are losing the battle over the hearts and minds of American citizens.
Yes, a "populist" movement based on the "The Unique Idea" underlying our Constitution is possible and may be under way at the moment.
Dr. Carson's articulation of ideas of freedom at the National Prayer Breakfast has tapped into the awareness already expressing itself, and like seeds planted in fertile ground, they may begin to blossom into another great ideas revolution.
If Divine Providence enlightened the 1776 "American mind" (Jefferson's description), using the means then available, then perhaps that same Divine Providence is at work in the technology of 2013, revealing what was hidden, shedding light in dark places, and "enlightening" the minds of individuals as to their Creator-endowed, therefore unalienable, rights.
Perhaps the Taxed Enough Already citizens read and came to understand the following:
"...there have always been those who wish to enlarge the powers of the General Government. There is but one safe rule...confine (it) within the sphere of its appropriate duties. It has no power to raise a revenue or impose taxes except for the purposes enumerated in the Constitution....Every attempt to exercise power beyond these limits should be promptly and firmly opposed." - Andrew Jackson's Valedictory
"...experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government), those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate...the minds of the people...to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth. History, by apprizing them of the past, will enable them to judge of the future...it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views...." - Jefferson's Bill for the more general diffusion of knowledge for Virginia
"Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant--they have been cheated; asleep--they have been surprised; divided--the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson?...the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it....It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free." - James Madison
Finally, from America's first President:
"The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period. . . ." - George Washington, Circular to the States, June 8, 1783" The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world." - George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789
The TP is tied to Big Gov’t, in the negative sense (as most TEA Partiers are actually the makers paying for the lame gov’t).
Sounds to me like they’re scaaaaared.
BIG communism is still pissed off at “BIG” tobacco for keeping the communists out of powah for so long. The tobacco companies made it extremely difficult for the communist party to take over America.
Well imagine that...
Tobacco Control Archives
February's edition isn't available online while Jan. and Mar. are!
‘To quarterback behind the scenes, third-party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party
Methods We used the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, the Wayback Machine, Google, LexisNexis, the Center for Media and Democracy and the Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org) to examine the tobacco companies’ connections to the Tea Party.
I’ve heard similar things in online debates lately about the NRA being nothing more than an advocate for the arms industry and how I am being duped. Generally, I don’t argue about it. It’s not worth a response.
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