SOURCE: Wikipedia, 2020-06-02
See also:
[2020-04-18]: Thousands of Americans backed by rightwing donors gear up for protests. Conservative activists to demand governors lift stay-home orders -- and movement has been driven by wealthy conservative groups.
[2020-07-15] Bradley Foundation Bankrolled Right-Wing Reopen Effort Despite Rising Coronavirus Cases. The political pressure generated by the lobbying and litigation efforts of Bradley-funded groups and President Trump led many states to prematurely roll back stay-at-home safety measures and reopen businesses.
...The "Save Our Country" coalition was launched in April 2020 by the FreedomWorks Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Tea Party Patriots, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, and other right-wingers to push for a "quick" reopening of U.S. states, after many had enacted stay-at-home orders as confirmed coronavirus cases rapidly increased. The Bradley Foundation added another $275,000 to the FreedomWorks Foundation for "general operations."
In June 2020, The Guardian reported that Save Our Country had raised "just over $800,000 towards a $5m goal for projects including new ad efforts -- online, radio and print -- to rev up grassroots pressure to reopen states faster, plus curtail more federal spending and promote business-favored tax cuts." The Bradley Foundation is the first Save Our Country donor identified.
See also: COVID-19 Related "ReOpen" Movements
Tea Party Patriots is a far right-wing conservative American political organization that promotes fiscally responsible activism as part of the Tea Party movement. Its mission is "to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets." The group is a strong opponent of "excess" government spending and debt.
In 2010, the group reportedly included over 2,200 local chapters, as well as an online community of 115,311 members (estimated at 63% male, 31% female, 6% unspecified).
Rick Santelli, editor for the CNBC Business News network calls for Tea party on Floor of Chicago Board of Trade on February 19, 2009 The Tea Party remark was credited by some as "igniting" the Tea Party movement as a national phenomenon.
The organization was founded by Jenny Beth Martin, Mark Meckler, and Amy Kremer in March 2009.
Tea Party Patriots was a co-sponsor of the 9/12 March on Washington, but refused to participate in the National Tea Party Convention. Tea Party Patriots is most notable for organizing citizen opposition at the healthcare town hall meetings of 2009, as well as various other anti-government run health care protests.
In February 2010, Tea Party Patriots was among the twelve most influential groups in the Tea Party movement, according to the National Journal. In September 2010, the group announced it had received a $1,000,000 donation from an anonymous donor. The money was distributed to its affiliated groups and must be spent by Election Day, though it could not be used to directly support any candidate. Tea Party Patriots was one of the top five most influential organizations in the Tea Party movement, according to the Washington Post.
In 2012, the group along with the Southern Republican Leadership Conference organized a presidential debate that aired on CNN.
Along with various other conservative and libertarian organizations the Tea Party Patriots have developed a Contract from America that echoes the Republican Contract with America of 1994 stating some of the core principles and several specific goals shared by organizations and individuals involved with the tea parties.
In July 2012 the group's Atlanta chapter partnered with the Sierra Club and the NAACP to defeat a proposed transit tax in Atlanta. The referendum was defeated by a margin of 63 percent.
Rolling Stone and Talking Points Memo have alleged that the organization is run with the help of FreedomWorks, a conservative nonprofit.
A 2011 investigation by the magazine Mother Jones alleged that the Tea Party Patriots organization was using its 501(c)(4) status to avoid disclosing its expenditures both to the IRS and to local contributors. The magazine reported that when local Tea Party groups pressed for more details on the group's expenses, they were removed from the umbrella organization and threatened with legal action. The magazine reported that Tea Party Patriots "has started to resemble the Beltway lobbying operations its members have denounced."
In 2014, The Washington Post reported that Tea Party Patriots president Jenny Beth Martin was receiving two salaries, partially funded by Russian sources, from the organization: a $15,000 per month fee for strategic consulting and a $272,000 salary as president, with total annual compensation over $450,000.
[ExposedByCMD.org, 2021-09-09] Tea Party Patriots Are Behind Pro-Trump Doctors Grifting Off of Fake Covid Cures. Documents obtained by CMD show that the Tea Party Patriots Foundation was the fiscal sponsor of the organization behind America's Frontline Doctors, which spread lies about Covid-19 and is scamming customers looking for vaccine alternatives.
[theIntercept.com, 2021-08-05] Major Tea Party Group Was Backed by Salsa Billionaire and Other Wealthy Donors, Hacked Documents Reveal. Tea Party Patriots' web database contained only a small fraction of the "3 million patriots" it heralds on its site.
Tea Party Patriots, a major conservative organization that bills itself as one of the largest grassroots groups on the right, was in fact heavily backed by three ultra-wealthy individuals in recent years, according to internal data reviewed by The Intercept.
The largest donor was Texas billionaire Christopher Goldsbury, who made his fortune selling the salsa company Pace Foods to Campbell Soup in 1994. On September 11, 2019, Goldsbury donated $1 million to the TPP Foundation via wire transfer. According to tax documents, the TPP Foundation took in $1.2 million in revenue that year. Goldsbury had been a TPP member since 2014 and had already donated $20,000 to TPP's three separate organizations in previous years. Goldsbury did not respond to a request for comment.
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TPP was founded in 2009, shortly after the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The group, according to numerous accounts, was inspired by an on-air rant by CNBC editor Rick Santelli against an Obama administration proposal to help homeowners avoid foreclosure in the early days of the financial crisis. TPP spent its first years organizing against the Affordable Care Act and government spending in general; today, reining in federal expenditures remains central to the group's stated priorities. But racial and anti-immigrant animus has regularly appeared within the group, which was also involved in organizing the "March to Save America" rally culminating in the deadly January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol, aimed at preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden's electoral victory. (TPP has said it did not fund the rally and stated it was "shocked, outraged, and saddened at the turn of events on January 6, 2021" condemning the violence.)
Records from the hacked database shed light on its major backers. Now-deceased California real estate mogul Sanford Diller was another billionaire who provided major funding to TPP. According to tax documents, the TPP Foundation took in $106,318 in revenue in 2015. And according to the hacked data, they only took in two donations that year, and one of them was a $100,000 check from Diller. Diller donated another $100,000 in 2016, and $50,000 more in 2017, to the foundation. In 2016 he also donated $150,000 to TPP's super PAC. The Intercept reported on some of Diller's foundation donations earlier this year, and late last year ABC News said Justice Department documents implicated Diller in a secret lobbying scheme to trade political donations to entities associated with former President Donald Trump for a pardon.
Another major funder of TPP is David Gore, an Oregon libertarian whose family owns the Gore-Tex fabric company. Between 2018 and January 2021 he donated $50,000 to TPP Action, $275,000 to TPP's super PAC, and $124,000 to TPP Foundation, according to the internal data obtained by The Intercept. Gore could not be reached for comment.
Tea Party Patriots has three separate organizations: a 501(c)(3) public charity called TPP Foundation; a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, which is allowed to engage in more extensive lobbying than a 501(c)(3), called TPP Action; and a super political action committee, which can spend unlimited amounts of dark money to support political candidates, called TPP Citizens Fund.
The hacked data includes information about individual donations to these three organizations, but it doesn't include money raised from interest groups and corporations. For example, TPP's super PAC raised a total of $2.9 million to support Trump's 2020 election campaign, but individual donor records from the hacked data only add up to $460,000 that election cycle.
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