Thanks to litigation, literally millions of pages of internal tobacco industry documents have given us a new understanding of how tobacco and the Koch family (through Citizens for a Sound Economy and other vehicles) have bankrolled and directed a powerful anti-regulatory campaign in the name of increased freedom and getting the government “off our backs”. (Not coincidentally, this litigation also found the tobacco industry guilty of violating federal racketeering laws.) Through these documents, we learned that the Tea Party did not spontaneously spring up in opposition to the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) in 2009. Philip Morris first developed the Boston Tea Party analogy for its grass roots operations in 1989 and continued to promote it through the 1990s. In 2002, Citizens for a Sound Economy started the U.S. Tea Party, registering the website [usteaparty dot com]. The organization was able to suddenly appear on the scene to oppose President Obama and the Democrats years later because it had been cultivated and developed by the same corporations that had been fighting for lower corporate taxes and against regulation of tobacco and greenhouse gases. All in the name of liberty.