Follow this link to an interesting story from Politico.com about some discontent brewing within the Tea Party movement about the involvement and influence of former Republican Congressman Dick Armey. You can read the story for the details, but it appears that some people ... make that a lot of people ... really want to keep the Tea Party movement out of any particular political camp .. and Armey's influence over the Tea Party Patriots group is a bit unnerving.

I looked through the story for some mention of Armey's involvement in 86-ing the FairTax from the TPP's "Contract From America" (CFA) website. Since they didn't cover it, I'll take care of that here.

The idea behind the CFA idea was admirable. People could register on the website, then they could present an idea for consideration by others. The idea was to get tens of thousands of Americans to vote on the various ideas. After a certain period the top ten ideas, as chosen by the participants, would be placed into a "Contract From America" and presented to political candidates for their signature. So far, so good. Seems like a good idea.

There was a problem though .. a problem for Dick Armey. Armey, you see, has been a long-time proponent of a flat tax. I can remember many years ago when Armey, then a Congressman, and Congressman Billy Tauzin from Louisiana went on the road to stage a series of public debates on a national sales tax vs. a flat tax. This was before the FairTax, but nonetheless I had been promoting the idea of a national retail sales tax as a replacement for the income tax for several years. The organizers of the Armey-Tauzin debate asked me to moderate. I promoted the event on the air --- and 3000 people showed up for an event the organizers thought would draw about 250.

So ... Armey is a staunch flat-taxer. Along comes this "Contract From America" bit from the Armey-funded Tea Party Patriots .. and guess what? "Enact the FairTax" turns out to be the number one idea by a two-to-one margin. Well Armey is having none of that, so mysteriously the website changes "Enact the FairTax" to "Fundamental tax reform" on its website.

So there we have another example of Dick Armey hijacking, if you will, the Tea Party movement to promote his own goals. No wonder people are grumbling.

You can't talk about Dick without bringing up the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Dickesode. Probably not safe for work. I mean, you shouldn't be watching cartoons at work anyway, right? -ww