Wherein I defend my position.

I was challenged, sorta, by a friend of mine over on the Liquid Diet blog last week for a passing reference in a joking post about a local beer drinking group in which I used a Tea Party as an example, suggesting that I have kept shifting my position on who is behind that particular scam.

He was wrong.

Frank Rich in this morning's New York Times:

[L]ocal chapters of Tea Party Patriots routinely received early training and support from FreedomWorks, the moneyed libertarian outfit run by the former Republican House majority leader and corporate lobbyist Dick Armey. FreedomWorks is itself a spinoff from Citizens for a Sound Economy, a pseudo-grassroots group whose links to the billionaire Koch brothers were traced by Jane Mayer in her blockbuster August exposé in The New Yorker.

I have said all those things and more in this space in the past. Dick Armey and his FreedomWorks organization were instrumental in forming the Tea Party into a political entity rather than a ragtag bunch of protesters. The Tea Party is essentially a FOX News TV show because the network (which has, amazingly, four potential GOP presidential candidates on its payroll) does everything it can to prop up their events. The Koch brothers are the money behind much the Tea Parties and much of the right wing movement.

None of those three positions are contradictory nor preclude the accuracy of any of the others. Nor are they wild and crazy fantasies propagated by the left.

Here's an analysis of the economic involvements of the Koch Brothers (and George Soros, who was also mention in my Liquid Diet post) in contemporary politics.

Here's is the much talked-about Jane Mayer expose in the New Yorker.

This is a "free market" site on Armey's involvement in the Tea Party movement.

And, finally, from Politico last week:

News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, contributed $1 million this summer to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby that has been running an aggressive campaign in support of the Republican effort to retake Congress. It was the second $1 million contribution the company has made this election cycle to a GOP-aligned group. In late June it gave that amount to the Republican Governors Association.

Here deponent doth rest his case.