AstroTurfing for public policy Re: [Peace-discuss] Re: Support for Tea Parties

Wed Apr 22 14:17:47 CDT 2009

Thanks, Wayne, but I don't think we can toss out this guy's ideas just because he is a "Republican and a friend of the Bush Family" and thinks that rabid s.o.b. Dick Armey is "a nice guy" (Besides his own idiocy, Armey collaborated with Steve Forbes last year to set up a fake "grassroots" group called "angryrenters.com" as a Beltway conservative front purporting to be ordinary renters opposed to the government bailout of the toxic mortgage scam victims, a type of PR lie called "AstroTurfing").  

Wead does, in fairness, give further evidence that these so-called "tea parties" were Libertarian fronts.  But even if Ron Paul and his crew came up with the idea back when, it looks a pretty solid case that Armey, Fox News, et al. ran the April 15, 2009, show  - thanks for these links, Mort! - in the same way Clear Channel et al ran the pro-war demos in 2003.  But they're as bad as each other on this knee-jerk anti-tax issue.

More importantly, Wead misrepresents the politics of taxes pretty obnoxiously.  There are of course plenty of big corporations that lobby hard for "lower taxes": Exxon, Philip Morris (big donations to the National Taxpayers Union), - and yes, General Motors, Chrysler, AT&T, and others.

Goldman Sachs and plenty of others have lobbyisys in bed with both major parties, of course: e.g. 
http://thehill.com/business--lobby/not-your-average-tax-lobbyist-2008-06-16.html.  That's not the issue.  Corporations definitely lobby against taxes.
They just don't lobby for lower taxes for *you and me*.  That's the Big Idea that's missing from this whole so-called anti-tax boat-missing party.  It's simply not true that a tax is a tax.  It matters *who* is paying and *for what*.  Many if not all of the same corporations also pay big money to the pro-Iraq-war lobby group BKSH & Assoc.  http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=BKSH_%26_Associates (of recent McCain scandal fame http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2008/02/charlie-black-john-mccain-aide-and-super-lobbyist)  - not exactly a proponent of reducing government spending *as such* (though there may have to be cuts in *social services* for the domestic population living in poverty or teetering on the brink in order to pay for the war(s)) - it's more a question of 'priorities' for them, at least on the political level if not the economic level.  

Of course, as an aside, this is another damning point about the "tea parties" that has been raised over and over in the blogosphere: where were these guys when Bush & Co. were jacking up the budget for war?  Some, like Ron Paul supporters were opposing the war agenda, but many tea party-goers either brought pro-war messages to the events or at least made at times amazingly jingoistic pro-war declarations online.  I've burdened everyone on this list with enough examples of that.  The point is, the result was not a protest against war but rather closer to the exact opposite.

Anti-tax corporations such as the above employ "some of the best law firms in Washington" to lobby for their selective tax cut agenda — Covington & Burling; Patton, Boggs & Blow; Caplin & Drysdale; Miller & Chevalier; Pepper, Hamilton & Scheetz.  They also have some large well-funded 'interest' (i.e. research, PR, lobbying) groups: the National Association of Manufacturers, for example, not only fights against on-the-job safety and health standards, and the like, but opposing taxes (that affect their biggest supporters).  For example, new proposals to tax their offshore profits (many of which, of course, 'earned' in the outsource-and-import business of dodging higher labor standards in the US by exploiting the suffering of the foreign poor) http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/04/13/business-lobby-taxes/.
But to focus on corporate lobbying alone is to miss at least to some degree seeing the forest for the trees.  Corporations are vehicles for wealthy capitalists / investors / business people to make money.  Ultimately they *are* just groups of wealthy investors - with a few non-wealthy suckers scammed into buying a few shares along the way (this is partly a financing scheme whereby the 'venture' gets a few more bucks from outside the 'Skull and Bones" fraternity, et al, but probably primarily a PR trick to get ordinary people to 'buy in' to the 'free market' ideology by getting a few crumbs from the table).  
There are any number of PR schemes they can try to put over on people to get them to oppose social - indeed humanitarian - public policy, even a kind of 'generation gap' http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1379 - another corporate-funded one, by the way.  But the point of them remains the same.
The fact is, taxes have dropped drastically for the wealthiest individuals since I was  kid and the top tax rate was 70% or more, down to barely over 30% - which is mostly a sham, of course, because they find loopholes, 'business expenses', etc.  But there always seems to be room to lower them more somehow.  All we have to do is cut some of the social services, fire departments, and other public projects that have helped raise the American standard of living - but of course almost never the military, or the police-prison system.  We'll need those because as you cut welfare and lower wages, and raise sales taxes - which is what happens when you lower other taxes and reduce federal and state aide to local communities - and so on, what you get is more crime.  And if you don't, it's simple - just make more things illegal.  But that's a discussion for another time perhaps.
What's insidious is the way they get ordinary people to buy into their 'AstroTurfing' schemes, by tossing them a bone here and there: "you work hard, right, why should you have to pay higher taxes so some lazy welfare queen can fatten up on ice cream"; "Muslims hate our way of life and Obama is one of them"; "taxes are bad for your grandchildren and will make them hate you"; "lesbians and other perverts are turning our children into Dungeons-and-Dragons-playing witches in the public schools since they banned prayer"; "hell, you can't even tell a Pollock joke any more"; etc.
Time to organize against the nonsense.Ricky 

"Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn 

________________________________
From: E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag>
To: Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu>
Cc: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 6:10:28 PM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Re: Support for Tea Parties

Doug Wead, who is Pentecostal, Republican and a friend of the Bush Family, writes:

...The fact is that the first, notable, Tea Party since Boston was launched at a Ron Paul campaign rally in Austin, Texas in December of 2007.The second was the famous “money bomb” fundraiser for Ron Paul on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party in the middle of the 2008 presidential run.And most of the crowd and organizers of yesterday’s event were Ron Paul supporters.But congressman Ron Paul, the Nostradamus from Texas, who predicted the crisis we now face, was not mentioned once by the national media.
Credit (or blame) for the event was given to former Texas congressman, Dick Armey, a nice guy but not THE guy or to Newt Gingrich, or to Washington conservative think tanks that mine for Ron Paul money but never give him any respect or credit, or FOX television who actually blocked him from an early debate in 2008, or from sinister “corporate interests.” Huh?Gee… I wonder what corporation could possibly be interested in lower taxes and less government spending?General Motors?AIG?
The fact is that many in big business switched to the Democrats in 1964 when they learned how Lyndon Johnson’s new regulations could wipe out their small business competitors and gain them monopolies.And it gained momentum, even in Republican administrations where powerful corporate lobbies ponied up for their share of government largesse.McDonalds, for example, wanted and received government subsidies to compete with French hamburger joints. Chuckle, chuckle.Now you try that.Go ahead.Open a hamburger stand and ask the government for money.Good luck.Wall Street and big business have been in bed with the Democrats for years.Republican corporate greed is not just a myth, it is true too, but most corporate leaders give to both parties.Silicon Valley is solid Democrat.In 1992 the CEO’s of Apple, HP, Xerox all opposed the Republican incumbent administration...

Read more...
http://dougwead.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/screwed-again-how-the-national-media-ignored-ron-paul-and-why-it-will-be-their-undoing/

Morton K. Brussel wrote: 
Old news, but a few articles relating to the Tea Parties and how and by whom they were promoted. 

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/09/lobbyists-planning-teaparties/

http://firedoglake.com/2009/04/13/corporate-lobyists-raising-money-for-tea-parties/

http://www.truthout.org/041709C   By Phil Wilayto

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/the-corporate-lobbyists-b_b_186367.html

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