So It Was Armed Robbery. Or Maybe Armeyed Robbery.
Get this. Dick Armey, former Texas Congressman who was the Judas in the Boehner/DeLay/Paxon attempted coup against Gingrich in 1994, has gone into the armed robbery business. He’s found that it pays better than actually working for a living.
Armey agreed to become head of Freedom Works, the money and propaganda machine of the Tea party. Freedom Works did not learn from history, either in economics or politics, but were soon to learn about Dick’s loyalty.
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 emphasis of the Washington Post story is about Richard J. Stephenson, a very strange libertarian dude who founded the for-profit Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Now let’s stop here for a second. Let’s pretend that you – God forbid – have cancer. Would you go to a for-profit treatment center founded by a guy who believes in social Darwinism and Ayn Rand? Uh, not me. I figure they’d have no social conscience about ripping off the lame, the last, and the lost.
Anyway, this guy was willing to personally pay Dick Armey to leave. And Armey and his armed guard took took the money. How the hell is that different from extortion and armed robbery?
This gun incident happened just two weeks after a shooting at the Family Research Council.
Now nobody on God’s green earth is prouder than I am about Freedom Works wasting $8 cash American money. And nobody could possibly be happier that Dick Armey is once again exposed as completely untrustworthy. But he walked away with $8 million dollars for being a snake oil salesman.
And that, my friends, is how right wing politics works. If they can’t screw you, they will screw themselves. But, somebody is gonna get screwed.
Thanks to Ralph and UmptyDump for the heads up.
How has it happened that “The Dick” has not been mentioned in the UBS scandal?
1More billionaire unguided stimulous, if Dick doesn’t send it to the Caymans.
2The Washington Post story also says that Armey always wears a black cowboy hat. At least the jerk knows the correct color hat to wear!
3Cancer Treatment Centers of America sell snake oil cures for cancer. They combine conventional treatment with stuff that has never been tested for safety and efficacy, and they skate by the FDA by saying it may “aid in” or “support” other therapy.
Essentially it is just selling fake cures to scared people. They’re easy marks.
(I’m cancer-free for eight months now. And I do my homework.)
4There is no honor among thieves.
5Nope, not astroturfy at all.
6I wonder how that went?
“… so clear out your desks, before I start watering the tree of liberty, Jefferson style!”
Ralph: congrats on 8 months. I’ll keep a good thought for you.
7Congratulations Ralph Wiggam … God willing, you will remain cancer-free and continue to live a long and healthy life!
A woman I worked with in CA went to a Cancer Treatment place in Seattle and whatever they did for her it actually shrunk the cancer cells in her liver and stopped the growth of those cells … so whatever they did, it did help prolong her life for awhile but then the cancer came back, spread and there was nothing more that could be done for her. Without whatever the place did for her she would have died a lot sooner then she did. So, sometimes, perhaps the snake oil actually does some good!
It’s just so sad that there have to be so many down and dirty crooks in this world!!
8I thought Dick was crazy; had no idea he was just crooked.
He spoke to our Fort Bend Chamber leadership group back during the day when we were visiting D.C. and when DeLay was a big deal. I thought then he was crazy as he didn’t put one coherent sentence together in his speech.
Maybe all those people are crazy and that behavior (Armey’s gun toting) is just run-of-the-mill to them. What amazes me is that in the past we’ve let him, or our elected representatives have let him, become one of the important people in our government.
Hell, we’re just now finding out that Newt’s crazy also.
9Hopefully this will push the ACLU to kick Armey off their board. I never could understand why they would let a misanthrope like Armey on their board to begin with.
10As my mother used to say, “lawdy, lawdy!”
11It makes me laugh.
Apparently, from what I read other places, Dick and his friends did not support the tea party candidates if a “good”
(aka a friends of Dick’s) candidate was running.
The money was supplied by tea party people, but Dick and his friends wanted to use it for his friends.
He supported can’t get pregnant by rape Todd Aiken.
Nuff said.
Congratulations Ralph!
12I wonder if, just for a moment, the people in that office had a niggling doubt about the wisdom of absolute gun freedom.
13And I get the gun, but why bring the wife?
14Maybe if those Cancer Treatment Centers spent as much money on patients as they do on advertising, they might make some progress other than “look at us”.
15Congrats Ralph………live long and prosperous!
I wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year!
May we all continue to enjoy our little corner of the sane world in TWMDBS.
Man, you just gotta love Dee Cee! They are all a’twitter over David Gregory showing a 30 round clip on live TV and we got a real live police investigation but show up at somebody’s workplace with an armed guard and intimidate and extort them and no investigation whatsoever. Gotta love it.
16Dick made his assistant carry the gun, because if there had been any trouble he personally would be off the hook. I wonder if that was in the job description when the assistant signed on? Even Jesse James was honest enough to brandish his own 6 shooter.
17You’re right JJ…someone is gonna get screwed, Just once, I wish Armey and his ilk would be the screwees instead of the screwers. Yeah, I know…never happen, but I can wish, can’t I?
18He brought his wife to use as a human shield.
19Why weren’t the people in that office packin’ heat? After the attack on that “Family” group was attacked they should have expected to be next. Aren’t the TeaBaggers supposed to be “Patriots”?
20Oh, Lord! A connection between the Tea Party and Cancer Treatment Centers of America!. I should have guessed!
As someone who worked in a cancer research lab, I am steamed at (and DEEPLY insulted by) CTCA’s come-on lines, which are unmistakably aimed at the desperate, terrified people at their most vulnerable.
“For advanced or complicated cancers? “Treatment that NEVER quits”? As if university-affliliated, not-for-profit hospitals WEREN’T competent to treat “complicated” cancers and DO “give up” in “advanced” cases where there’s the faintest hope! As if CTCA has more concern for its patients and knows treatment secrets respected non-profit facilities don’t!
A note to Marcy: It’s not unheard for cancers to TEMPORARILY go into remission regardless of the type of treatment received. That does not mean the remission resulted from some treatment available only at CTCA. Your former co-worker would almost certainly have experienced a temporary remission no matter where she was treated.
21Once again a Texan comes along, does or says something so outrageous as not to be believed yet it is true. Sadly once again “you can’t make this stuff up!”
22So if the FreedomWorks employees had not agreed to leave, the gun-wielding assistant would have….?
People who think that carrying a deadly weapon around is normal scare the crap out of me. An argument gets out of hand and instead of a bloody nose you’ve got a dead body.
23Dang, I am so glad that my late husband did not fall for that CTA stuff! He went to a university medical center which prolonged his life for 2 more years than he would have had. If he were alive today he would not have been one bit surprised at Armey’s behavior. Husband came from that neck of the country. He claimed that nearly everyone he ever knew felt somehow deficient and over-compensated with gun ownership inasmuch as the damn things were so common and so cheap! Says a lot about Armey, don’t it!
24FreedomWorks (Tea Party politics), Freedom Group (Tea Party guns), PatriotWhatever (Tea Party fill-in-the-blank), Americans-for-Prosperity (aahhh, yes, there’s that Old Time Religion – money)… all linked in some form or fashion to the Council for National Policy. Reminds me of a nasty, nasty spider web.
Grand Old Party = Grand Old Chautaqua
25With big tents for dim-millionaires & dim-wits alike.
For further consideration, analysis on Hardball this evening:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#50300023
Watch Chris Matthews’ and David Corn’s faces when Joan Walsh calls Dick Armey a grifter and a jerk. You go, Joan.
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