During Glenn Beck's little 9/12 rally in DC (and before and since that time) the national organization has collected quite a bit of money, in dues, donations, and product sales. Apparently, either Kremer or the national organization is resisting a call for accounting from its membership. According to a series of posting on the TPP mail list:

Date: Tues, Nov 10 2009 8:32 pm From: [redacted] I sent this letter (*certain personal information has been removed from the attached text that does not pertain to my* *organizational/financial

questions*) to the Board of Directors of TPP on October 11, 2009. The letter was sent in an effort to understand where TPP money is/has/was going. TPP receives donations from across the Country, and know that a very large amount of money was received in Washington DC on 9/12. Where is it? How much do we have in the bank? What are we spending the money on? Where are the records? I believe that this is my right as someone who has supported this movement not only with my time but my money. [redacted] partially answered some of the questions but gave me an assurance that the "Board would get back to me with answers to my questions" (paraphrased). Well it has been almost a month now and still no reply... ...I have been ignored from the Board of Directors and am putting

it out to everyone so you may voice your concern should you have one. I

believe that one of TPP’s main principals is "Fiscal Responsibility" so

where is ours? I did not ask any hard questions and should not have been

ignored. We have been asking our government for transparency, where is ours? ...

Here's a bit of the original email to TPP's board, essentially saying, "show me the money":

On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 10:49 PM, [redacted] <[redacted]@gmail.com> wrote: ...I have had questions/concerns since I got involved with TPP. I voiced some of my concerns on September 28 on the 6+ hour call and never really got complete/good answers. I asked the several questions about finances. How much money does TPP have? How much did we make in DC? Where are the

financial statements? Do board members get paid and if so who? Who signs

the checks? Where does our money go? I refer to "our" because just like

the Government the money comes from the people, TPP doesn't have any money. I got a lot of "I don't know" for answers and having worked in the corporate world for the past 35 years find this unacceptable...

Did you know that Tea Party Patriots is a tax exempt organization? I wonder if the IRS will have any interest in the teabagger's finances?

During the genesis of any idea, whether a political idea or new product idea, it's always about control - control of the message, the intellectual properly, and ultimately, the money. Seems like there's a little internal war going on. And yes, there is more. Basically, it comes down to an internecine fight for control of the teabagger message between the Dick Armey front group, FreedomWorks Foundation (which started the Tea Party Express bus) and true, grassroots activists of the Tea Party Patriots group.

Pass the popcorn - because there's much more coming...

Update: Just a bit more information that I forgot to include - apparently this whole thing started when Kremer used her admin privileges on teapartypatriots.com, .net, and .info to redirect to blank pages after the initial little dustup - and then, wanted to sell the domains.

Updated update: from the teabagger group list...

> We recently sent out a fundraising email to raise money for the relay for

> farmers in the Central Valley in California. I can promise that every single

> penny donated will be used for that purpose and not one penny will go toward

> any other purpose..The lawsuit did not just happen the past few days. We

> have had legal counsel working on it since mid October. And to even

> insinuate that we sent out that email in order to obtain money for legal

> proceedings is completey absurd!

Absurd, I tell you. Absurd.

Update to the updated update: Well, well - now the story's been picked up by HuffPo - which almost ensures that this will make KO and/or Rachel tonight (since the story has made the trifecta of Politico, Dkos, and HuffPo). Again, get the popcorn ready...