This Astroturf action is brought to you courtesy of Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks. The Center of American Progress Action Fund has done excellent research about the groups. The New York Times also has an excellent article about David Koch and the reach, political and financial, of Koch Industries. (Billionaire Pledges $100 Million to New York State Theatre, July 10, 2008) The groups are, effectively, political groups for Koch Industries, a huge multi-national energy conglomerate. The founder of Koch Industries, Fred Koch, also helped found the John Birch Society, a group founded to find and stamp out communism and its sympathizers in the United States.
Koch has a far-right agenda which includes privatizing social security, denying global warming, cutting corporate taxes, opposing affirmative actions, opposing Title IX, and opposing domestic violence laws and equal pay. With this type of agenda, the type of hate speech seen at the anti-healthcare rallies is not surprising.
Americans for Prosperity
Americans for Prosperity is an astroturf factory.
Americans for Prosperity supports smoking as a property and personal right.
In Texas, they argued that a 2007 proposed smoking ban "violates property rights", "reduces consumer choice and violates free market principles", and "cause real economic damage." The group also argued that "Smoking bans are designed to harm the Mom-and-Pop local businesses. Restaurant chains may benefit. Do legislators want to favor chains over local establishments?"
Americans for Prosperity also worked for the defeat of the SCHIP bill under President Bush. The group also opposes net neutrality for the internet.
FreedomWorks
FreedomWorks has a history helping to manipulate town halls. During President Bush's administration, the group was open about how the town halls were staged. According to Newsweek,
"Officials from the conservative group FreedomWorks have worked closely with the Bush administration to coordinate the president's town hall meetings on Social Security, often suggesting names of the people on stage, report White House Correspondent Holly Bailey, Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe and National Correspondent Tamara Lipper in the March 14 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 7). FreedomWorks, founded by former vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp and former House GOP leader Dick Armey, campaigned heavily for Bush's re-election last year and now fights for his plans to overhaul Social Security.
At least five of FreedomWorks's activists have appeared with Bush, and the group has bused hundreds to eight of his events in recent weeks, Newsweek reports. By the group's own tally, at least one third of the audience at a town hall-style meeting in downtown Tampa last month were FreedomWorks members. And in Westfield, N.J., last week, an advance team of White House officials held a dress rehearsal for participants the day before an event (which the town's newspaper said was simply meant to "gauge opinions of New Jerseyans"). Officials do this before each show, usually with a stand-in playing Bush, to help people on stage "say things clearer," says one FreedomWorks member."
Both Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are working to deny the average American affordable, dependable, healthcare. This is not a "grassroots" effort, it is astroturf at its finest - bought and paid for by one of the largest companies in the country.
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