**** Armey gets $8 mill Golden Handshake from 'grass roots' TeaParty

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tay

Hall of Fame Member
May 20, 2012
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The day after Labor Day, just as campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall.

Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.

The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone — with a promise of $8 million — and the five ousted employees were back. The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative grass-roots organizations.

Stephenson, the founder of the for-profit Cancer Treatment Centers of America and a director on the FreedomWorks board, agreed to commit $400,000 per year over 20 years in exchange for Armey’s agreement to leave the group.

The episode illustrates the growing role of wealthy donors in swaying the direction of FreedomWorks and other political groups, which increasingly rely on unlimited contributions from corporations and financiers for their financial livelihood.


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FreedomWorks tea party group nearly falls apart in fight between old and new guard - The Washington Post
 
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Highball

Council Member
Jan 28, 2010
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Good old poor boy **** will no doubt launch another radio campaign go tell us all what is wrong. His best points involve his profits from his financial and political investments. What a waste of a human mind.
 
damngrumpy

damngrumpy

Executive Branch Member
Mar 16, 2005
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kelowna bc
First the Tea Party was never a grass roots organization. Freedom Works is heavily
financed by big donors and owners of the name, Two of them are from big oil and
the notion that a grass roots group would have eight million to toss away for the final
payment of one person is asking people to be gullible at best.
The Tea Party is the movement that is trying to hijack the American Government and
revamp the constitution itself. Extremely wealthy people and other social conservatives
along with the back to Jesus crowd are behind this and the average American be
damned. They will get what is left over.
Armey was part of the movement when Newt was propelled into office nearly a generation
ago and they want their privilege back.
With the new political reality, all those urban Black voters, Hispanics, and other minorities
that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. The next Democrat for the White House is already
working from the Obama list to create the ready made threat of this (The Tea Party) group
getting control of the people's democracy.
 
T

tay

Hall of Fame Member
May 20, 2012
11,548
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Former FreedomWorks chairman **** Armey revealed that the Tea Party group paid Glenn Beck about $1 million to say "nice things" about the group on his radio show, and that it got a negative return on that investment, in an interview Friday — with the liberal group Media Matters, of all places. It's the latest strange revelation in the FreedomWorks civil war. Armey reportedly tried to stage an armed coup last fall, but his reign didn't last long, and donor Richard J. Stephenson agreed to pay Armey $400,000 a year for 20 years to go away. Apparently that didn't come with a non-disparagement clause.


After the liberal magazine Mother Jones posted a copy of a FreedomWorks document about its fundraising, Armey reached out to Media Matters to explain how the group wastes money by trying to raise money through radio hosts Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Armey said FreedomWorks paid Beck $1 million to say nice things about the group to raise more cash, but Beck's appeals raised considerably less than that. "The arrangement was simply FreedomWorks paid Glenn Beck money and Glenn Beck said nice things about FreedomWorks on the air," Armey said, adding that, initially, Beck's kind words were only supposed to cost $250,000 a year. "Once that was approved by the trustees, it then took on a life of its own, it got bigger than we understood it to be. All of a sudden it was we are paying Limbaugh as well as Beck." The price of Beck's nice words then went up to $1 million a year, Army said. He explained how it was a bad investment:

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http://www.theatlanticwire.com/poli...ks-his-freedomworks-payback-glenn-beck/60624/
 
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