St. Louis Tea Party

Right-wing radio personality, Andrew Breitbart acolyte and St. Louis Tea Party leader Dana Loesch warns tonight that "that some elected officials are uncomfortable with #MO teaparty and are trying to do media hitjob."  By "hitjob," she means "journalism she doesn't like."

 

It's hard to imagine that anyone could be uncomfortable with the ridiculous behavior of the St. Louis Tea Party leaders. 

h/t St. Louis Activist Hub

The Beacon's Jo Mannies reports today for the first time on the St. Louis Tea Party's new lobbyist in Jefferson City, Gary Wiegert, and organization leader Bill Hennessy's "defense" of the choice to make Wiegert their lobbyist.   Yet like the Post-Dispatch, the Beacon's coverage of the STL Tea Party's lobbyist completely omits the details of Hennessy's and Wiegert's recent and relevant activism on state legislative matters -- their attempt to smear Speaker Steve Tilley as "aligned with the New Black Panthers."

With a video featuring Wiegert, Reboot Congress's Darin Morley, hate radio personality Dana Loesch and other Andrew Breitbart lackeys, Hennessy led to charge to spread this junk just last month.  The Beacon reported on the manufactured controversy in February, but then disserves readers by ignoring it altogether when Wiegert is promoted instead of marginalized for his key role in the smear.   Hennessy's role in the pathetic attack should not be overlooked either, but somehow it was -- again.  (See here, here, here and here for examples.)

Read More »

The Post-Dispatch notes this morning that the St. Louis Tea Party has a new lobbyist in Jefferson City -- Gary Wiegert. Weigert's registration with the Missouri Ethics Commission was first reported (to my knowledge) by Dave Drebes.

Unfortunately, Jake Wagman's post neglects to mention the most salient detail of Weigert's activism against legislation to move control of the St. Louis Police Department away from the state -- his involvement in pushing conspiracy theories that Speaker Steve Tilley and the "Missouri House Leadership" are "aligned with the New Black Panthers." 

Read More »

Wednesday night, Andrew Breitbart lackey Mike Flynn threatened Peter Kinder and Carl Bearden that he would "go nuclear" if Speaker Steve Tilley refuse to "walk back" his statement that opponents of local control legislation had engaged in "race baiting at a level that I haven't seen since I've been here."  Tilley is understandably annoyed and upset with allegations from the St. Louis Tea Party, affiliated blogger Darin Morley and perhaps others who have tried to manufacture absurd arguments regarding the Speaker's alleged "association with the New Black Panther Party" in their fight to stop the local control bills.

Flynn demanded that Tilley "walk back" his comments before a scheduled interview with Dana Loesch, a leader in the St. Louis Tea Party who just happened to be an active participant in distributing the New Black Panther smear, and who just happens to "edit" a sister Breitbart propaganda site.   This might lead you to think that Loesch, who purports to be a tough-talking, straight-shooting independent conservative, would confront the Speaker about his "association" with racist, anti-Semitic radicals. 

You'd be wrong.  Here's the full interview, for your listening pleasure:

Note that Loesch states in the interview that "I don't think that anyone was specifically trying to tie, like, you to the New Black Panther Party,"  (6:25 mark).   This is absurd, and Loesch knows it.  She tweeted a blog link to her followers on Tuesday that was explicitly about "Tilley's recent association with the New Black Panther Party."

Said Reboot Congress blog post then linked readers to another post titled, "Why has Missouri House Leadership aligned with the New Black Panthers?"  Doesn't that sound like she was specifically trying to tie Tilley to the New Black Panther Party?

It gets worse. 

After Tilley hung up and after Loesch's patrons at KFTK paid a few bills with a commercial break, Loesch turned on Tilley and Bearden, unleashing criticisms and accusations she didn't think of bringing up when Tilley was actually in a position to defend himself.    She repeated the obviously false claim that "no one ever said that Speaker of the House Steve Tilley was associated with the New Black Panther Party," and then railed against "the Republican establishment here in Missouri."

A must-listen:

Read More »

While right-thinking persons were watching Mizzou beat Baylor last night, right-right-right-thinking persons were threatening Speaker Steve Tilley and Rex Sinquefield lobbyist Carl Bearden on the twitternets. 

Late Wednesday afternoon, Mike Flynn, the "editor in chief" for Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, came to the defense of the St. Louis Tea Party and their bizarre New Black Panther party conspiracies.    Specifically, local leaders Bill Hennessy and Dana Loesch (who "edits" the sister Breitbart site Big Journalism) claim to be outraged with Tilley's complaint that St. Tea Partiers' activism against local control legislation had devolved into race baiting.  A message from Bearden makes it clear that Tilley's frustration was directed at downright bizarre content created and published by another tea party leader, Darin Morley, lamenting "Tilley's recent association with the New Black Panther Party" (i.e., Rep Jamilah Nasheed). 

Flynn is now demanding that Tilley "walk back his...smear" of the tea party on Loesch's radio program this afternoon, or "we'll go nuclear."  "We," in this context, is presumably the right-wing Breitbart echo chamber.

Here are Flynn's messages to Bearden and Peter Kinder (more on him below) in chronological order:

• Tilley on Dana's show tomorrow. He walks back attack on tea party or we go full throttle. Stupid fight you picked.
• As God is my witness, this will not end well for you. Every dollar ever to you will be public
• Peter, don't make the mistake Carl did. Stop trashing the tea party. Full pain coming tomorrow afternoon
• Spkr Tilley will be on Dana's show tomrw. If he doesn't walk back his and Carl's smear against TP, we'll go nuclear
• Carl, must feel good, I guess, that the left has your back. No doubt you are proud.

Unhinged stuff. 

Read More »

Two years after they first came together, the St. Louis Tea Party has decided to focus at least a fraction of their energies on what they deem to be insufficiently conservative Republicans who live inside Missouri's borders.  For all of the hullabaloo and attention given to the tea partiers in St. Louis, they've been virtually indistinguishable from the Ed Martin political organization and GOP establishment in Missouri.  To date, anyway.  

Now, they're taking on Speaker Steve Tilley (R-Perryville) for supporting local control legislation pertaining to the St. Louis Police Department. On Twitter and the bloggernets, leaders call Tilley an "establishment politician" and call the House-passed local control legislation "irresponsible." Nothing too crazy there; reasonable people obviously disagree about the local control issue. 

But Tilley is also accused of 'astrotufing' because he's tried to recruit area Young Republicans to help him at Lincoln Days.  Last night, followers of the official @StLTeaParty twitter feed were sent to a blog post discussing "Tilley's recent association with the New Black Panther Party." The evidence for this bold claim is that Rep. Jamilah Nasheed (D-St. Louis) was photographed at some point next to a black man wearing a beret. The Post-Dispatch takes note of the accusation today, which Tilley calls "race-baiting at a level that I haven't seen since I've been here."

I'm not accused of standing up for Steve Tilley very often, but...huh?  

Read More »

Speaking yesterday afternoon with conservative radio host Mike Ferguson on Columbia's KSSZ after announcing his bid for the U.S. Senate, Crazy Ed Martin wasted no time in outlining the reasons why he thought former state Treasurer Sarah Steelman should not be the Republicans' choice to take on Claire McCaskill next year.   Martin's initial criticisms focused on the fact that Steelman has previously held elected office, the fact that some labor groups have supported her in previous campaigns, and her opposition to "tort reform."  

MARTIN:  Primaries -- elections are supposed to be about choices.  So, primaries are good when they give us a choice.  I think you, you know, obviously, when they become nasty and counterproductive they can be bad.  But they should be about our public record and the principles, and people should be able to look us in the eye and say, "What are you about?"

And you, know, Treasurer Steelman has had a -- most of her adult life has been in elected office.  And so she has a very public record. And I think, you know, we're going to have to go through that.  And she's going to have to contrast with me.

I will tell you, one of the things that I've heard in the last few months I hadn't known was that she's received the endorsement of SEIU during her career, that she was comfortable with the public sector unions and their, their ideas.  And I think that's very worrying. 

Because that, that -- two of the major issues that are really distorting our American democracy and our federal system are the presence of public sector unions, which are used -- SEIU, over here in St. Louis, we call 'em the purple beaters. You know, they beat people up at our tea party events.  And so, we're very aware of the public sector unions distorting the American democracy by taking our tax dollars and then using those dollars against us to elect liberal Democrats and sometimes Republicans.  So that's a big deal.

The other one is tort reform. We haven't seen a lot of Republicans who oppose tort reform. And Treasurer Steelman is, you know, opposes tort reform in her public record. Those two are pretty big issues. 

But there's going to be a lot more. We have to talk about what the future's about.

Listen:

Read More »

On KMOX this afternoon, Senator-elect Roy Blunt continued his defense of the federal earmarking process, and accurately stated that angry tea party activists shouldn't be suprised by his opposition to an earmark ban. And not only should they not be suprised, Blunt said "they shouldn't be disappointed." Speaking with host Mark Reardon:

REARDON:  You signed this tea party agreement.  And I know that the tea party group has gone after you. They're disappointed in your stand because I guess they feel like it's a bait and swich.

BLUNT: Well, they shouldn't be disappointed on this.  I've been very clear on this, on your program and everywhere else, that I think there will always some things in the federal government that should be--  that are competed for, and I intend to compete for the ones that Missouri has a reason to compete for.

Listen:

A person could criticize Blunt for being dismissive and unimpressed with the tea party's complaints, but he's right.  We knew his position all along, and if they were too dumb to know what he was all about, that's their problem.   And why would he care about any of their hysterics if they don't actually follow through on any of their threats?

The Post-Dispatch reports this afternoon that Roy Blunt plans to vote against a ban on earmarks.  THIS IS A TOTALLY SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT.  This isn't shocking to anyone familiar with Blunt's record in the House or his lame damage control on the issue earlier this year, but it is noteworthy on a day when even Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) flip-flopped to support the ban.

Meanwhile, St. Louis Tea Partiers like Dana Loesch and Bill Hennessy are either (a) executing their own post-election damage control strategy after supporting Blunt's Senate candidacy, or (b) really not up to snuff in the reading comprehension department.  Hennessy, for example, condemned Blunt (after the election) for "pretend[ing] the Tea Party never happened."  And today, Loesch tweeted all of the following:

• Are you kidding me? @clairecmc is opposing earmarks whereas @royblunt is not? http://bit.ly/d5sC4d
• I can't say what the heat is going to be like if @royblunt refuses to stand against earmarks. Grassroots are furious.
• I'm ready to start looking for a viable candidate who can run a GOOD campaign to primary Blunt unless he goes anti-earmark and ltd govt.
• All #MO eyes on @royblunt to see if he joins McConnell in endorsing earmarks ban...

All of these are very bold and courageous stands for a radio personality to take after passing on Senate candidates in the primary and general elections who opposed the current earmark process, and refusing to make any real stink at a time when it actually would have mattered.

Read More »

Notice anything odd about this list of speakers for the upcoming "9/12" rally in St. Louis?

Wackadoo Steve King and Georgia Rep. Tom Price are on the docket, so event organizers clearly haven't created some sort of no-politicians-allowed policy. 

Peter Kinder's maniacal tweeting has made it abundantly clear that he lacks the judgment and grasp on reality required of public officials.  But has it also failed to win over the tea party wing of the Republican Party in St. Louis -- the true target of his outreach?  

Is Ed Martin's absence part of his campaign's desperate (and very recent) move to the center? He was in on the ground floor of the St. Louis Tea Party -- but now he may be absent from one of their big events, just weeks before the general election?

Read More »

Right-wing criminal/activists James O'Keefe, Joseph Basel, Robert Flanagan and Stan Dai pleaded guilty to federal charges in New Orleans today.

According to the Times Picayune, O'Keefe "received three years of probation, a fine of $1,500 and 100 hours of community service," and his compadres received slightly smaller sentences.

No word yet on how Missouri Republicans are reacting to the news. But based on their loud defenses of O'Keefe et al., I'm sure we'll be hearing some strong denunciations.

Read More »

We see a lot of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do behavior in Missouri politics, but the St. Louis Tea Party managed to reach new heights lows in jaw-dropping hypocrisy this weekend. 

Not that long ago, you may recall, local tea party leader Bill Hennessy, Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft and a few other yahoos delivered a coffin to Rep. Russ Carnahan's home.  In Hoft's words, the protest was a peaceful deal, and they were just there to pray for "the millions of babies that will be slaughtered under the democrat’s pro-abortion health care bill" and "the handicapped and the elderly who will be turned away as they face the death panels created" in the new health care reform law (!). 

But this weekend, Hennessy writes that "mounting evidence suggests the White House may have been complicit in SEIU’s terrorism (as defined by U.S. Patriot Act) of a banker’s teenage son."

And what is this "terrorism (as defined by U.S. Patriot Act)," you ask? A protest at the home of a Bank of America executive in Washington, DC.

Read More »

Peter Kinder is a bit of a pickle. He really, really, really wants the tea partiers to like him. But he's also pinning his fading hopes for a successful gubernatorial run on voters in St. Louis thinking he's a reasonable person. Those constituencies overlap in the St. Louis Tea Party, which staked its reputation on defeating Proposition A.

Proposition A, which passed yesterday by a wide margin, will raise the St. Louis County sales tax by a half-cent to help fund the Metro transit agency. Kinder's tea party friends (he hopes they're his friends, anyway) hated the idea of propping up the public entity. But around this time last year, Kinder was positioning himself as a champion of Metro funding, asking state taxpayers to provide $20 million for Metro, to survive long enough to push and pass Proposition A.

In fact, Kinder specifically pointed to extended state funding for Metro as one of the top legislative achievements in 2009. He wrote:

Read More »

The Post-Dispatch:

By a wide margin, county voters approved a half-cent increase to the transit sales tax to restore lost bus and Call-A-Ride service and, eventually, expand the reach of mass transit farther into the St. Louis suburbs...

The sales tax is expected to generate about $75 million a year in St. Louis County, which will be used to restore lost service and expand MetroLink and bus rapid transit. Metro officials said passage of the measure also would trigger collection of a transit sales tax that voters in the city of St. Louis approved in 1997.

St. Louis County voters had defeated similar tax increases in 1997 and 2008.

St. Louis Tea Party activists fought against the initiative. Last week, The Beacon described the campaign as "a test of their strength and organization."

From an interview with former state senate candidate and KTRS "political analyist" Gina Loudon:

Loudon acknowledged that success in defeating the tax proposal could prove the prowess of the local Tea Party's organizational skills, as well as bolster its image and the confidence of its activists.

Read More »

Adam at St. Louis Activist Hub flags an Ed Martin Facebook message from Saturday in which Martin praised the "concerned citizens" who protested outside of Rep. Russ Carnahan's district office.  We love a good protest, however misguided or redundant, but this was not your typical sign-waving, horn-honking protest.  Chad Garrison of The Riverfront Times:

This weekend's health care vote in the U.S. House brought out the radical, right-wing fringe (again).

At a St. Louis Tea Party rally outside of Russ Carnahan's St. Louis office on Saturday, an angry mob threw shoes at a photo of the congressman before lighting the image on fire.

"I love the way a fire smells when it's burning tyranny!" a protester exclaimed in a video of the the protest.

Read More »

Cross Posted at the St. Louis Activist Hub Blog. The St. Louis Tea Party is trying to make a big deal about the fact that people on the pro-healthcare side of the street weren't displaying any American flags during President Obama's visit. Of course, there's never been a rule that you have to bring an American flag to every protest you attend. On the other hand, there is a rule stating that you shouldn't display an American flag upside down for a protest, which is exactly what the St. Louis Tea Party did

Read More »

Originally posted at St. Louis Activist Hub.

Shortly after the recent Tea Party convention in Nashville Tennessee, a new group emerged in St. Louis dedicated to fighting against funding for public transportation in the St. Louis region. The misleadingly titled "Citizens for Better Transit" (CBT) was publicly represented by spokesperson John Burns, a relative newcomer to St. Louis politics. Despite the fact that Burns had no particular credibility and was using wildly misleading talking points (which I'll have to discuss at a different time), the local media has been quite willing to treat him as the spokesperson for a legitimate group and to provide him with equal airtime to the pro-transit campaign. In this post and the following, I want to examine the recent political activities of John Burns characterized by the blatant use of misinformation, sketchy connections, and contempt for the LGBT community.

Read More »