Tea Party Profiteers
During the past few weeks, far left funded smear campaigns have fueled a very ugly media blitz against the tea party movement. The effort is in place in an attempt to discredit the movement, and tear it down piece by piece.
The problem, of course, is that the movement has no head. There isn’t a national organization that can claim ownership over the movement, nor can any group claim to be leading the movement. The tea party movement, instead, is ran by thousands of activists at the local level. And that is where the flaw in the far left smear strategy comes to light.
But they’re still pumping their twisted message into corporate media, and unfortunately, some tea party activists are buying into it.
The biggest attack as of late is the lashing out against people who are paid to work within the movement. It’s absurd to suggest that people who do this full time should not be paid, but they’ve somehow spun that to mean that people are “profiting” off the movement. And even more absurd is the fact that some tea party activists within the “free market” movement are upset that some entrepreneurs have created a means through which they can pay some bills through their activism.
Kevin Jackson, one of the movement’s most talented voices, posted this comment on Facebook today.
Friend of mine said that somebody complained that I speak at events for money! I asked if the inquirer wanted me to accept carbon credits? Some of these “grass roots” people are as idiotic as Libs! I have 4 kids, two in college, and this is the way I make my living! But I should do all this for FREE!
Jackson has a very good point. Yesterday we posted some links to books being sold about the tea party movement. These were books we recommended, and we wanted to help the authors make a few bucks for their hard work.
EDIT: You can check out Kevin Jackson’s book “The Big Black Lie” here.
In no less than an hour, I had emails from people complaining that the authors were trying to make money off the movement. Words cannot describe how disconcerting this is to me.
First of all, Richard Behney, John Ohara and Stephanie Anderson, all three of whom are tea party organizers, have worked far more than full time jobs in this movement when the time called. There is certainly justification for compensation. But more importantly, we as “free market” activists should applaud their work in writing these books and we should reward them with our pocket books, not balk at them for doing so.
The reality is, there are many people who now work full time in this movement. The emails you get, the information you’re provided with, the events you see developing, the projects that are underway… much of this would not happen if people were not compensated for some of their time. As Kevin Jackson pointed out, people who travel and speak at events, and those who help build projects and organizations within the movement have bills to pay.
It goes against everything we stand for to suggest that people should not be compensated for anything in this movement. It flies in the face of entrepreneurship, and quite frankly, it would have our founding fathers turning in their graves.
And with regards to the claim of “profit” within the movement. Let’s be clear… being compensated is one thing, “profiting” is another. Yes, there are multiple organizations that ask for donations to fund projects. But that in no way means they “profit” from it. And to assert such is complete assumption. And in some cases, rather slanderous.
The Real Tea Party Profiteers
Now let’s talk about those we know profit from the tea party movement. Corporate media.
Isn’t it ironic that Huffington Post, Politico, Talking Points Memo, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and many other media outlets will title a column with the words tea party movement in it, then line the page with ads, then use the column to accuse the movement as “profiteers?”
I mean, think about it. These people are not working to advance the movement. They aren’t traveling around to work with coalitions at the local level in order to help them be more effective. They aren’t leaving their families for a weekend to go speak at an event that needed help, they aren’t putting out detailed information that activists need in order to find out what to do next, and they aren’t working with the movement to help get liberty minded candidates elected.
Yet, they clearly write what they write for… PROFIT! If what they write is not profitable, they wouldn’t write about it.
Indeed, the real Tea Party Profiteers are those running the smear campaigns against the movement.
We would be wise not to play into their game.
-Eric Odom
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