By Judson Berger

Published February 15, 2013

FoxNews.com


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/.../#ixzz2L0BU5J6T

Taxpayer dollars were used to fund a study that painted the Tea Party movement as the spawn of the tobacco lobby -- a premise that Tea Party leaders say is absurd.

The study was published earlier this month in the Tobacco Control journal and was formally presented by its authors at an on-campus symposium in San Francisco Feb. 8.

"The Tea Party that we see in 2009 actually has decades of influence from tobacco and other corporate interests," co-author Amanda Fallin said at the time, downplaying the notion that the group is just a "spontaneous grassroots movement."

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.

The study was funded by federal taxpayer grants through the National Institutes of Health and its subsidiary the National Cancer Institute, both federal agencies. It's difficult to tell how much grant money specifically went toward this study, but federal records show researchers at the university have received $7 million since 2007 to study tobacco issues.

*snip*


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/.../#ixzz2L0Aupnb4

Absurd!

One of the libs at TBL posted the article reference, that painted the TP as a creation of the tobacco industry. So ridiculous, and yet on TBL it's mindlessly eaten up.

Zitat

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"As of 2012, AFP and FreedomWorks were supporting the tobacco companies' political agenda by mobilising local Tea Party opposition to tobacco taxes and smoke-free laws,"

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Nice try asshole. Anti tax and no worthless regulations are basic Conservative/Libertarian tenants, not some back door support of the tobacco industry. If the GOP had any balls, they would cut all of the funding to this BS, but since they hate the Tea Party just as much as the Leftists, they will probably authorize more spending in this direction.

Face it the movement has been hijacked in some ways by these superpacs. We need to start being skeptical with the way some of these "nonprofits" are working on our behalf. Just sayin'

Quote: steph wrote in post #4

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Face it the movement has been hijacked in some ways by these superpacs. We need to start being skeptical with the way some of these "nonprofits" are working on our behalf. Just sayin'

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When a teaparty group lobbies the government for a bailout, then you'll know it's been hijacked. Until then, it's all about increasing freedom, and smoking laws are part of that.

Well at least he did not take the grant money and buy a gun to shoot up a theater. But other than that it is the same old liberal BS.

Quote: Frank Cannon wrote in post #5

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Quote: steph wrote in post #4

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Face it the movement has been hijacked in some ways by these superpacs. We need to start being skeptical with the way some of these "nonprofits" are working on our behalf. Just sayin'

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There are a couple so called TP super pacts that are bogus, but the 2 cited here in the article just happen to be the 2 most effective at both on the ground work and funding good candidates. There is a reason these 2 were targeted.

This loser that wrote this report is making a claim that is easy to make because the people who were against the anti tobacco lawsuits on the grounds they were just a Govt' money grab, like myself, have the same political ideology that Tea Party folks have. Limited Govt'. it doesn't matter the issue, we would be on the same page. So thy want us to believe that the TP is just an extension of big tobacco? If this charge was actually true, where are the TP rallies for getting smoking back in restaurants and bars?

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Hillary and a panda, oh, that hurts my mind.

That is just bizarre to waste money on. The article goes into detail of the real serious problems of financial mismanagement for personal gain.

This yahoo below really does a great job of PR for the TP too.

http://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2013/02/1...ines-day-cards/