astroturf

Just caught these idiots bragging on Twitter:

AFPNC 6:26pm via web AFP to launch one million dollar ad buy in NC exposing Obama radical energy policies #ncga #ncpol #ncgop Ad on air next week

I'm going to issue a challenge right now to the mainstream reporters who will comment on this ad when it comes out: When you talk about this ad, you need to reference the oil industry, if not the Koch brothers themselves, as being behind the commercial. If you don't, you're misleading your audience/readership. We'll be watching. Speaking of watching, watch this:

And they don't even know they're walking on it:

American Majority will be joining Heritage Action for America of North Carolina to conduct a grassroots activist training session in Concord, North Carolina on Saturday, October 22nd.

In case you're wondering, that "grassroots activism" included recruiting and inciting hundreds of nut-jobs to threaten counter-demonstrate against public employees in Wisconsin who were trying to defend their collective bargaining rights. Here's more about American Majority:

Knowing the right lies to tell is important:

Today is Tom Doheny’s first day on Capitol Hill, where he is serving as Press Secretary for freshman Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC).

He previously was in the Charles G. Koch Foundation Associate Program at American for Prosperity from 2009-2010.

Translated: Paid by Koch, used by AFP.

What's the use in being rich if you can't intimidate people?

The resort grounds were “closed for a private function,” the resort’s head of security, James Foster told POLITICO, ushering the reporter outside, where private security guards, wearing gold lapel pins bearing Koch’s “K” logo, threatened “a citizen’s arrest” and a “night in the Riverside County jail” if the reporter continued asking questions and taking photographs.

Hat tip to JW at Watauga Watch for the link. This kind of stuff is just downright spooky. If you've got enough money, you can become a country unto yourself.

^{[first time I've written here, please bear with me... thanks]}

Being a new resident here in central Raleigh, I've been observing the wrangling surrounding the schools in Wake county. I joined a Triangle-area online forum that's part of a big site even before we moved here because they had a lot of useful info, 'intel' that even helped with the decision where in the area we wanted to live after our job-mandated move from California. So I would read about parents' frustration with long bus rides, frequent schedule changes, disruptive reassignments... and also why some of it was worth the inconvenience. My own daughter is almost done with college so thank gawd this stuff was not an immediate concern anymore, but I could understand why some folks would be unhappy with how school assignments were handled here.
 

The next time you hear the crazies talking about "grass roots" activism, print out a copy of this article and show it to them. Just remember, you might have to read it aloud for some.

Almost every single time I start checking out some flashy new Conservative organization, it ends up being a "Seven Degrees of Sarah Scaife" game. Which is one of the huge foundations that fund various right-wing "think-tanks" that peddle corporate misinformation, like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. In this case, it only takes about four degrees to connect the dots between these mega-funders and the new "student organization" that has plunged UNC Chapel Hill into controversy lately, the Youth for Western Civilization.

The middle dot in this connection is the Leadership Institute out of Arlington Virginia:

The Leadership Institute's mission is to identify, recruit, train, and place conservatives in politics, government, and the media.

At the rate of spending revealed so far it appears that the NC Association of Realtors (NCAR) and the NC Home Builders Association have committed to spend at least $400,000 each in fake grassroots efforts to defeat the transfer tax in the 16 counties holding a referendum on the issue. Contributions from affiliated realtor groups could bring the total projected state budget close to $1,000,000 for local astroturf committees alone. This in addition to state level lobbying expenditures by NCAR of $938,787

Here's an update from Johnston ($74,386) and Harnett ($45,425) counties via Stop The NC Home Ticks:
 
 

Faced with a drought of public support for its high profile opposition to the transfer tax the NC Association of Realtors (NCAR) has replaced the withered remains of the "Stop The NC Home Tax" website. With newly installed Astroturf at the same address called "Vote No on the Home Tax", hoping to fool county voters into thinking it is a real grassroots movement, the website has scrubbed all references to NCAR. In its place is a roster of newly formed "Local Committees" to provide cover for the real involvement of the realtors' group.