Washington Post Finally Figures Out Rightist Billionaire-FreedomWorks-Teabagger Links Just Five Months Late

God damn, do we love The Exiled; they love to say what needs to be said, the way it needs to be said, and bust the balls that need to be busted, as hard as they need to be busted. Here's their reporter Mark Ames, catching us up on how they scooped our own hometown rag, the Washington Post, on the connections between Dick Armey's FreedomWorks, the Teabaggers, CNBC, and a whole gaggle of right-wing billionaires:

News Flash! Five months after Yasha Levine and I broke the story linking the rightwing billionaire-PR nexus between FreedomWorks, the Koch family, CNBC, Eric Odom and the Tea Party movement, the Washington Post finally caught up with us. In an article in today’s Sunday edition, the WaPo repeats our allegation that billionaires are posing as “grassroots” groups to oppose anything that isn’t in the billionaires’ interests, including health care reform and mortgage relief for homeowners:

Several of the biggest efforts are led by established veterans in the conservative movement, whose organizations receive heavy funding from industry groups and sympathetic billionaires.

First, there’s our old pals FreedomWorks, whose role in setting up the Tea Party protests we broke in late February. Here is the WaPo’s account of FreedomWorks’ role in the anti-healthcare reform attacks:

One of the most prominent organizers is FreedomWorks, a Washington-based advocacy group headed by former House majority leader Richard Armey (R-Tex.) that is also pushing to defeat Democratic climate-change legislation. FreedomWorks’s major financial backers have included MetLife, Philip Morris and foundations controlled by the archconservative Scaife family, according to tax filings and other records...

Check out the whole buttload of lowdown at The Exiled...

(...and, just to refresh everybody's memory, here's CNBC's own Teabagger shill, Rick Santelli, ranting live from the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange...)