Tag Archives: astroturf

NEW ORLEANS: Anti-Gay Hate Groups Infest Annual Astroturfing Convention

This week in New Orleans, hundreds of conservative lawmakers from around the country gathered for the annual American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) convention, where lobbyists from the nation’s largest corporations issue their marching orders on which big business-friendly bills they expect to see passed. Think Progress reports that this year’s event featured the distribution of vicious and lie-filled anti-gay propaganda …

Read More »

NOM Is Astroturfing Facebook

According to NOM defector Louis Marinelli, NOM is paying people to plant anti-equality comments on Facebook pages. As social media manager for the National Organization for Marriage, Louis J. Marinelli, the then 24-year-old behind the “Protect Marriage: One Man, One Woman” page, was asked to put together a “SWAT team” of people to comment in favor of NOM’s content and …

Read More »

Now Running On CNN

Karl Rove’s astroturf group American Crossroads has been running the below anti-union ad for about a week. Note the clever way they excise the speech of an NEA spokesman.

Read More »

WISCONSIN: Blogger Claims To Have Called Gov While Posing As David Koch

Mother Jones reports that New York-based journalist/blogger Ian Murphy claims to have had a 20-minute phone conversation with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker while posing as billionaire Tea Party kingpin David Koch. The Koch brothers were major backers of Walker’s campaign and are known to have donated millions to astroturf groups posing as ordinary citizens. According to the audio, Walker told …

Read More »

WISCONSIN: Billionaire Teabagger Koch Brothers Behind Union Busting

Read More »

Rachel Maddow: Tea Party Express Is A Secret GOP-Funded Astroturf Group

And she hands CNN their heads for airing Bachmann’s speech.

Read More »

Health Insurance Lobby Gave $86M To Fight Health Care Reform

A coalition of insurance companies donated over $86M to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to fight the passage of health care reform. The Chamber is notoriously run by GOP-insiders. The spending exceeded the insurer group’s entire budget from a year earlier and accounted for 40 percent of the Chamber’s $214.6 million in 2009 spending. The expenditures reflect the insurers’ attempts …

Read More »

Rachel Maddow On The Billionaires Funding The Tea Party Movement

Read More »

Harry Reid Astroturfs Sharron Angle

Nevada local television covered a group of senior citizens calling themselves the Alliance For Retired Americans as they protested outside the campaign headquarters of teabagger loon Sharron Angle. But the group’s “spokesman” is actually Richard Miller, the head of Reid’s Southern Nevada Steering Committee. I guess they thought those terrible handmade signs made them look all for realz and shit.

Read More »

Astroturfers Fight NY Gov. Paterson’s Proposed Beverage Tax

NY Gov. David Paterson’s controversial beverage tax, which is meant to fight obesity (and help balance the budget), is facing vigorous opposition from soft drink manufacturers. The astroturf group New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes has been running the below ad on NYC television every hour for the last few days. The proposed tax is one cent per ounce of sugared …

Read More »

Insurance Companies Paying Facebookers To Oppose Health Care Reform

Insurance companies have been busted paying Facebook members in virtual currency in return for sending their Congress members an email opposing health care reform. Facebook users play a social game, like “FarmVille” or “Friends For Sale.” They get addicted to it. Eager to accelerate their progress inside the game, the gamers buy “virtual goods” such as a machine gun for …

Read More »

Astroturfistan: Maddow Rips President Of “Americans For Prosperity”

Last night Rachel Maddow tore into the president of the anti-Obama astroturf group Americans For Prosperity, who refused to say where his funding really comes from.

Read More »

Rachel Maddow Takes On Astroturf Kingpin Rick Berman

And he actually sits there and defends his industry-backed websites which say that mercury in fish is OK for you, transfats UNclog your arteries, high fructose corn syrup isn’t fattening, and on and on.

Read More »

Maddow: Racist Nightmare On K Street

Rachel Maddow tips us to ResistNet.com, a racist GOP-astroturf group that is organizing against health care reform.

Read More »

Maddow On Astroturf Anti-Reform Group Americans For Prosperity

Americans For Prosperity is an astroturf organization, one that poses as being comprised of “grassroots” individuals, but is actually largely funded by corporations opposed to reforms that would hurt their profitability.

Read More »

Maddow On Fake Protesters

Read More »

The Astroturf Tea Party

Playboy Magazine, of all sources, is claiming that this weekend’s “tea party” anti-Obama rallies around the nation were not, in fact, a spontaneous burst of grassroots outrage prompted by CNBC host Rick Santelli’s viral YouTube clip, but were actually a carefully plotted campaign planned months ago. What hasn’t been reported until now is evidence linking Santelli’s “tea party” rant with …

Read More »