Town Hall Mtg

no merri

SEE PAID PROTESTER SOROS BS

this category  ORIGINALLY relates specifically to the campaign to shut down democ legislators charged by BO to sell/explain affordable hc act,but also refers more generally for a legislator to have direct public interaction with constituents(evil to perversely attack?)  Gabby?

evil because town hall is remnant of New England Norman Rockwell or even native american (roman senate?) direct democracy, all get to speak their piece/peace/ evil b/c scripted by plutocrats who buy plenty of free speech and b/c purpose was to suppress exchange of ideas/explanation of a complex bill decades in the making [AMA paid campaigns inc to kill it].  John McCain got right on global warming b/c a young constituent called him on it.

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aha-let: senate on slow 6 yr cycle as buffer vs house  2 yr, so town hall is extension? direct 1:1 sort of moving into election cycle (more or less constant.

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an 8 25

NPR reports Republicans facing fury back home over their Big Beautiful bill appear to be hiding behind a placard of conservative talking points when confronted with the facts — that is if they let themselves get confronted at all.

"The playbook is simple: focus on Republicans' efforts to improve voters' everyday lives and show the contrast with out of touch Democrats," according to a memo released by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).

But earlier this year, the NRCC also urged GOP lawmakers to avoid town halls altogether, and NPR reports Republicans took the message well. Out of 219 House Republicans, roughly 37 hosted some kind of townhall so far during the August recess, according to an NPR tally. Of those, approximately 16 hosted at least one in-person event.

READ MORE: 'Reckless': Lifelong diplomats are 'stunned' by Trump's 'obnoxious' new appointee

And those that do venture into a crowd appear ready with the NRCC list of issues that polled well to deflect recrimination.

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“How can you justify taking health care away from 78,000 Nebraskans?" asked one attendee at an Aug. 4 town hall for Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.).

“Flood's responses to the hasty questions often followed a formula,” reports NPR. “He would state something positive about the policy while propping up a conservative talking point.”

"You have an additional $700 million coming into the state of Nebraska for Nebraska hospitals," responded Flood to the question. "If you are able to work and you're 28 years old and you choose not to work, you don't get free health care in America."

READ MORE: 'Completely lost the leverage': Big law firms that cut deals with Trump now ignoring him

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) followed a similar script at a townhall in July.

"The (Big Beautiful) bill also cuts out $700 billion from Medicaid and millions of people are going to lose their insurance coverage,” demanded one of Newhouse’s constituents. “So what leads you to believe that this is good?"

"We're going to encourage work in this country, which used to be a good thing. Work ethic is something that we value. If somebody is going to be benefiting from the American taxpayer and they're able to work, then they should," responded Newhouse, aping Flood’s vetted ‘everyone should work’ message.

Other talking points the NRCC suggested Republicans pivot to are the “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” aspects of Trump’s bill.

READ MORE: 'Cry more!' Fox host mercilessly mocked after complaining about Newsom's dig at Texas gov

But political scientist Jim Curry told NPR that Republican incumbents visiting back home are going to have a difficult time selling their behavior to voter.

"I don't think the Republicans messaging on the bill is particularly strong or effective, in part because it's not very clear cut," said Curry. “… What almost invariably happens is a party sweeps into power. They're given control of everything, and then they overreach.”

Read the full NPR report at this link.

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AN 725 GOING BADLY A WHILE ESP AFTER B3? JONI E all die;

Never seen a crowd like this': Pro-Trump GOP rep's town hall mobbed by angry constituents mike flood?

an 5 25

'Let her stay!' New York voter forcibly removed from GOP rep’s rowdy town hall

mtg GREENE had 6 dragged out, 2 TAZED?!

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andy biggs only allow gop?! another must reg w cops

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AN 3 25

It wasn’t a typical Friday night event in the downtown of Montana’s largest city.

The only music played at the event was a closing song, “America,” which brought the crowd of nearly 1,000 to its feet.

About the only people missing from the event that filled the spacious Lincoln Auditorium in Billings (capacity: 1,636) were the three chairs reserved for Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy as well as Rep. Troy Downing whose congressional district covers the Magic City and all of eastern Montana.

Not unlike dozens of other town-hall style meetings across America, the purpose was to ask questions of leaders about what is happening in Congress, with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. And not unlike many recent meetings, the elected leaders did not show up.

That did not stop residents, some from as far away as Missoula and Wibaux counties, from showing up, standing in long lines to ask a question, and former Gov. Marc Racicot from urging the crowd to fight for democracy. Racicot himself has been an example of the changing political winds: The former chairman on the Republican National Party was booted from the state Republican Party after criticizing the direction of the party and Trump.

The Daily Montanan reached out to all three Congressional representatives who were invited. Only Sheehy’s office responded.

“Here is my response to media asking if I will attend Democrat dark money group Indivisible’s left-wing rallies: No, I will not legitimize a radical group that wants to defund the police and abolish ICE,” Sheehy said.

Indivisible, a national group that started in the wake of George Floyd’s death, started as a movement to rein in abuse and to curtail funding to police and other law enforcement agencies. Yellowstone Indivisible organized the event, although during the event, not a single speaker spoke about defunding law enforcement or police brutality.

“There have been town meetings since this country was just 13 colonies and ruled by a king. We want to make it clear to our elected officials that we still don’t want a king,” said Yellowstone Indivisible co-leader Elizabeth Klarich. “We could be doing March Madness, or we could be attending the boys basketball tournaments at the Metra, but we decided to do democracy tonight.”

President Donald Trump campaigned on a far-ranging platform of reform, including to reshape government as well as reduce consumer prices and curbing inflation. Montana is also a heavily Republican state with every member of the Congressional delegation and the five state “constitutional officers” all being Republican. In Montana, Trump took 58% of the vote in the 2024 Election.

Speakers who asked questions and told raw personal stories drew applause, sometimes standing ovations, including for the opening Pledge of Allegiance.

“If we were hired to do a job and refused to do it, we’d get terminated,” Klarich said. “Have they forgotten we have the power to fire them?”

The organizers recorded the meeting, and said they will be delivering a copy of the video to Daines, Sheehy and Downing so they can see the response and turnout.

Billings resident Elizabeth Halvorson worried about the impacts of tariffs on Mexico and Canada, since they represent a combined 93% of imports to Montana.

“What are you going to do protect ag producers? What are you going to do to protect us from higher costs?” she asked.

Throughout the meeting, residents spoke to the trio of empty chairs, each with a placard naming the Congressman who didn’t show.

Steve Held, who ran for Congress as a Democrat and whose daughter was part of the historic youth climate trial that bears his name, spoke on climate change.

“Climate change doesn’t give a damn if you live in Broadus or Bozeman, and the Montana Club will not protect you,” Held said, traveling from Broadus to attend.

Bailey Desper, who is a transgender woman worried about Elon Musk, a common concern at the meeting in Billings and at other meetings, was using government data.

“How are they going to make sure that our rights to privacy are entrusted?” she asked.

Jason Severeid of Billings said that he’s been living independently for two years thanks to help from insurance programs like Medicaid. He has an autoimmune disease that requires infusions every three weeks. Without those programs for him, it’s literally a matter of life or death.

“What assurances can you give me so that my treatment can continue? Please don’t touch Medicaid,” he said.

Maybe the longest and most thunderous applause came for Peggy Wellknown Buffalo, a member and leader on the Apsaalooke (Crow) reservation. She has been lauded for her efforts of providing more than 2 million pounds of food during the COVID-19 pandemic on the reservation in southern Montana, and still runs a food assistance program.

At first she addressed the empty “Congress chairs” in Crow. Then, she spoke in English.

“Your First People are worse off. How much more do we have to give up?” she asked.

Randi Hall of Billings said she’s met Daines previously and voted for him.

“Canada is our friend. You’ve been to the Hi-Line and seen the flags together. You are turning our greatest ally into an enemy. Who would have thought that would happen? Who would have seen the day when Albertans refuse to buy from us? I voted for you and I feel betrayed. I am Montanan and begging you to start voting and acting like one,” she said.

Political science professor Paul Pope, who teaches at Montana State University-Billings, said he wasn’t speaking on any particular issue, but made a different kind of plea.

“If any of you want to seek public office, I am offering my help to run against these absentee representatives,” he said.

Sheehy ousted former three-term U.S. Senator Jon Tester, 53% to 45%. Downing won handily in the conservative Second Congressional district, capturing nearly two-thirds of the vote. And, Daines was the head of the National Republican Senate Campaign Committee that helped the GOP regain control of the U.S. Senate. He will stand for re-election in 2026.

Elizabeth Sillerud, a pastor at American Lutheran Church, described the immigrant families her congregation has helped. Quoting from the Bible, she ticked off passages that urged kindness and hospitality toward foreigners and strangers.

“How are you all — descendants of immigrants and people of faith — responding to immigrants?” she asked.

Gerald Kessler, a retired school teacher and counselor, said he feared for America’s standing in the world.

“You have turned the world order upside down,” he said. “Russia, North Korea and Israel are now our friends when Canada, the U.K. and Denmark — Denmark, really? — are turned against us? In 1949, George Orwell wrote a book called ‘1984’ and I am sorry to say the only thing he got wrong was the date.”

Megan Cassel of Billings said she worried about how this period in history will be remembered.

“History will not remember that we made America great for all the casual pain and hate,” she said.

Laura McGee, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, said that she had spoken repeatedly to Daines’ office about fraud and waste but hasn’t received an answer.

“We demand our treaties, our healthcare, our education and to protect our tribal colleges and universities,” she said.

University of Montana student Shannon Sheehy had pointed words for Montana’s newest senator.

“I’m Shannon Sheehy — no relation,” she said, as the audience laughed. “I am the only Sheehy with courage to get on stage. I am a student at the University of Montana. There is fear there because the climate studies students fear that their program will be dismantled. Trans students are told they are not safe here. And I am worried about student loans. You are not here tonight, and it is clear that no Republican is willing to stand up.”

She also had a different, more personal message for Sen. Sheehy, who often uses his last name as a recurring joke about pronouns, she and he.

“Also, don’t ever use my name as a transphobic punch line again,” she said.

Ryan Chaddick, a pastor in Billings, spoke about his concerns for those who are neurodivergent.

He said that politicians see neurodivergent folks as those who are broken or needing to fix.

“I live with an invisible disability and don’t always show it,” he said. “Many of our leaders are invisible tonight, but my message is that we are neurodivergent; we are here; and we are watching.”

Dozens of people spoke during the event. As the time wound down, ending before all could make it to the microphones, many left questions in a basket that would be forwarded to the trio of absent leaders.

As the town-hall style meetings have spread throughout the country in the wake of the upheaval of the Trump administration and Musk’s action, Republicans who have shown up to these meetings have faced stiff opposition and anger, even from people identifying as Republican. One of the more notable events happened when Rep. Harriet Hageman of Wyoming appeared at an event in Laramie this week.

That event saw Hageman roundly booed, as she said it was “bizarre” that the audience members were so focused on the federal government. She urged them to calm down and suggested they were “hysterical.”

At a similar town-hall style meeting in Bozeman on Friday, an estimated 350 residents gathered but no member of the Congressional delegation attended.

Republican strategists and leaders have urged Republicans not to show up for the meetings, which is why Racicot appeared to lend some perspective as a Montana leader. Former U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, who was beaten in November by Sheehy, sent a message to the Yellowstone County crowd, too.

In a state where politicians brag about how many miles they put on cars traveling to meet constituents, the lack of participation is something new to Treasure State residents. The Daily Montanan had reached out to Pope, a noted political scientist, prior to the event to ask about the shift and the strategy behind not attending these events.

“By not attending, they simply can avoid saying the wrong thing or just defending their actions or inactions. The risk of making people angry by not showing up may be perceived as less than if they did and add fuel to their fire. They forget, they represent us, and the Constitution requires them to defend their own powers against a president who is trying to usurp both their law making and budgetary powers. I believe they are doing this out of party loyalty,” he said.

Pope did not mince words in his analysis of the dangers that the American democracy faces at this particular moment.

“If Congress and the courts fail to hold the President accountable to the Constitution and the rule of law, then they have no ability to constrain the people to the rule of law. This creates chaos and that kind of chaos often leads to violence. In short, Congress’ inactions to constrain the president could literally mean the end of the union,” he said.

Racicot spoke to the crowd and delivered a message to the crowd as people shouted “Racicot for president.”

He spoke about the crafting of the Constitution and the dangers of defying the rule of law, villainizing judges, and reaping pain by creating emergencies.

“It reveals a complete lack of respect for the rule of law. We have had a democratic republic for 237 years, and yet it is fragile and based on the concept that every American must choose it and practice self discipline to maintain order and a respect for fellow citizens,” Racicot said. “To those who seek to lead us at this existential moment of peril, we will strive to be informed and learn. And we will demand loyalty to the Constitution and the rule of law.”

The event closed after singing “America” twice, but not before Klarich declared the event a successful example of democracy alive.

“You beautifully saw how democracy works. We will not brandish pitchforks, we will join arms and not tear each other down,” she said. “The selfish greed of power-hungry oppressors will not rob us of seeking our dignity and our joy.”

Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com.

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an 3 25

LEXINGTON — More than 900 people gathered Saturday morning for what was billed as a People’s Town Hall at the Kentucky Theatre. Many waited in line to address an empty chair on stage next to a sign that said “Reserved for Congressman Andy Barr.”

Multiple speakers, including Brady Blanton of Richmond, alluded to Republican Barr’s earlier suggestions that attendees were “liberal activists” or paid to be there.

“I’m not a paid protester; I’m a blue collar worker,” Blanton said. “I am a child of Social Security survivors benefits and Medicaid after my father passed away 15 years ago and they kept my family afloat.”

Blanton, 26, told the Lantern he works for a plastics manufacturer in Winchester. He said he still depends on Medicaid to provide his 2-year-old daughter’s health insurance and that he worries that cuts to Veterans Affairs will hurt his grandfather, a veteran of the Vietnam War.

Blanton noted that the U.S. House’s budget blueprint would increase defense spendingby $100 billion while cutting $880 billionfrom health and human services such as Medicaid, which covers 196,729 people in the 6th Congressional District or 26% of Barr’s constituents. Almost 1 in 3 Kentuckians are enrolled in Medicaid.

Barr says don’t worry about Trump and Musk, but declines chance to reassure upcoming town hall

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The Department of Veterans Affairs would lose 80,000 jobsunder a planned reorganization by the Trump administration, according to an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press. VA provides health care and other services to veterans.

Older speakers talked about their fathers’ military service, including fighting fascism in World War II, and their distress at what they see as Republican President Donald Trump’s embrace of authoritarianism while giving longtime allies the cold shoulder.

Describing himself as a lifelong Republican, Edwin Gibson said his father had served in the Navy during the Korean War and that he himself had been stationed in the Army in Germany during the Cold War. “Congressman Barr, you are complicit in the betrayal of our democracy,” Gibson said.

Barr, of Lexington, who is mulling a run for U.S. Senate next year to succeed retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell, took to X (formerly Twitter)Saturday morning to “set the record straight” in response to what he called “the handful of people who falsely claim they cannot reach anyone in my office or that I ‘refuse to hold town hall meetings.’”

Barr in his X post said that he and his staff are in daily contact with his constituents and that they host monthly office hours in every county of the district. He said he is hosting a telephone town hall Monday night.

“What we will not do is provide a forum for individuals more interested in grandstanding than engaging in a respectful and constructive conversation,” Barr said.

Organizers with the nonpartisan group Gathering for Democracy said that after not getting a commitment from Barr in response to their invitations, they decided to schedule the town hall to give people “distressed by what is happening in our government” an opportunity to come together and talk about their concerns.

“The intent is to invite dialogue,” said Judith Humble, one of the event’s organizers. She said volunteers handed out 800 cards for attendees to fill out before running out of cards.

Speakers were filmed and the video will be sent to Barr; attendees could write a question and tell their story to the congressman on the cards, which also will be sent to Barr. Former Lexington Mayor Steve Kay moderated.

Concerns voiced during the gathering ranged widely from cuts to the U.S. Forest Service cited by a speaker who identified himself as an archaeologist to worries that the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development will cancel expansion of the University of Kentucky’s partnernshipwith the underserved community of Santo Domingo, Ecuador.

Students, faculty, staff and community members participate in UK’s Shoulder to Shoulder Global,described on the program’s website as “transformative, short-term experiences in global health.” Plans to start a physical rehabilitation center as part of the program are on hold because a federal grant has been frozen, said physical therapist Lynn English.

Barr also took to X after the gathering saying: “Nice to see Soros + the left lighting money on fire. No amount of manufactured outrage by paid activists will stop the mandate for total overhaul of DC” and reiterating his support for Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has advised Republicans to avoid town halls after some GOP representatives have faced hostile crowds.

The Kentucky Democratic Party and former U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth of Louisville plan to hold a town hall in Lexington Wednesday at the Lyric Theatre & Cultural Arts Center from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com.

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mma // paid protestor?

Sean Hannity claims clips of outraged constituents at GOP town halls are “fake videos”

03/21/25

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AN 3 25

Police escorted several people from a town hall with two Colorado Democrats Wednesday night after they shouted that the officials aren’t doing enough to protect the environment and push back against President Donald Trump’s administration.

A heated crowd in Golden heard U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Lakewood answer questions about Democratic leadership in Congress, the legality of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, preserving the integrity of the judicial branch, and concerns about a lack of tangible actions to hold the Trump administration accountable. Hundreds gathered for the town hall at the Bunker Auditorium at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, which sits in Colorado’s 7th Congressional District, represented by Pettersen.

Several people affiliated with activist group Climate Defiance Colorado handed fliers to town hall attendees as they entered the venue and stood at their seats holding signs during the event. They shouted out criticizing Bennet’s votes in support of several Trump cabinet nominees and for failing to push back against the president’s actions. Others accused Bennet of “killing the planet” and taking money from oil and gas, which Bennet denied.

Since Trump took office in January, he has fired thousands of federal employees, frozen federal funding approved by Congress and resisted court orders, among dozens of other extreme executive actions.

The auditorium erupted between people shouting at Bennet and people rebutting in defense of Bennet.

“You can’t compromise with fascists,” one person yelled.

“You’re attacking the wrong man,” a woman shouted back.

“We’re not going to do it this way,” Bennet said. He told one person, “What you’re saying is totally false. It’s not true.”

Later in the night, other attendees who were also removed from the venue called out to criticize continued U.S. support for Israel despite the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza. “Stop spending more on bombs than you do on schools,” one attendee said.

Police escorted out just under 10 people throughout the night after Bennet’s staff attempted to talk them down.

“I know that these are intense times and that we can have disagreements, but I don’t think that engaging in that way is helpful,” Pettersen said.

Despite the interruptions, Bennet said he would still encourage his Republican colleagues to hold town halls and hear directly from constituents.

“This is a free country. People have the right to express themselves,” he said to reporters after the town hall. “There are always going to be instances like that, but we also were able to have the conversation that we needed to have tonight.”

Bennet also hosted a town hall in Greeley Tuesday night and will host one more in Colorado Springs on Thursday. Progressive groups are holding “people’s town halls” in Republican congressional districts around the country where Republicans are declining to engage directly with constituents.

‘I want to see obstruction’

The first constituent to ask a question Wednesday said “words are great” but that he wasn’t seeing any action, and attendees asking for more substantial answers and actions to oppose Trump policies continued throughout the night.

Amanda Arlington, a Parker resident who worked at Denver Public Schools when Bennet was the district’s superintendent, said she saw him show up for kids in classrooms at the schools regularly, but she hasn’t seen that translate to similar action during his time in the Senate, she said. Arlington said she hasn’t heard a plan for how Democrats are actually working against Trump, and she asked Bennet and Pettersen to share one.

“I feel like you’re talking pretty,” Arlington told Bennet while asking a question during the town hall. “I want to see obstruction.”

Bennet said that with Trump in the White House and majorities in both chambers of Congress, Democrats have to find other methods of pushing back.

“It doesn’t do anybody any good for us to pretend that that’s not real,” Bennet said of Republican control in Washington. “But it’s not an excuse for not continuing to push. It’s not an excuse to not continue to lift our voices.”

Democrats need to “obstruct everything,” Arlington told Newsline after the town hall, because Republican plans at the federal level “are terrifying.”

“We need leadership to say no, because we’re not in Washington,” she said. “I mean Republicans have been doing that for years. They have a lot of power and they stopped a lot of (President Barack) Obama’s agenda … I want to see that from the Democrats, and I’m not seeing it.”

She added that Republicans are “going to devastate the economy. They’re going to devastate kids. They’re going to devastate health care, and devastate rural America.”

Jake Kotula from Denver said Republican actions are “a huge departure from the norm,” and he hasn’t seen any different behavior from Democrats to react to the new political landscape.

“The question I was going to ask them was, ‘What distinctly are you going to do differently
now that the rules of engagement are different?’” Kotula said in an interview with Newsline after the town hall. “Give us actionable steps about how you are bucking the norm the way that the Republicans are bucking the norm, the way they are eroding democracy.”

Both Colorado Democrats at the town hall should “weaponize the bureaucratic foundations of legislative proceedings” like the Senate filibuster and encourage others in their chambers to do the same to support the judiciary, Kotula said. He got to tell Pettersen his thoughts after the town hall concluded. Both elected officials talked to people in the audience.

Ron Meehan from Lakewood said many people have “deeply rooted and valid concerns” about protecting federal assistance programs, democracy and the climate, and residents want to know what Democrats are doing to respond to those concerns, and how they can get involved.

“I am hopeful that they will have a more unified front, and they will be able to pull the public more in, because we know that the public right now is engaged,” Meehan said in an interview with Newsline after the town hall. “They are furious about the real impacts that these (decisions) are having on people’s lives and their ability to get by, and we have to have really meaningful action on that.”

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE. SUPPORT

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com.

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3 25

MAGA MIKE? NRCC SAYS STOP th bc doge have ppl, farmers/ sr/ vets mad}:

gop dude walked out b/c city slickers drove in MB to silence his rural ppl

many even msnbc // to ACA, but those engineered by koch network // hot air tour

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MMA // FALSE FLAG PAID PROTESTOR

Sean Hannity suggests the “uptick in callers” to his radio show that are angry with Donald Trump are staged

03/04/25

https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/sean-hannity-suggests-uptick-callers-his-radio-show-are-angry-donald-trump-are-staged)

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BOGUS ACA TOWN HALLS MOJO

Town Hall Protests: Astroturf 2.0? – Mother Jones

This summer, town hall meetings to discuss health care reform have turned into battlegrounds—with fist fights, belligerent protestors, and at least one lawmaker reporting a death threat. Some Democrats have blamed the chaos on astroturf operations: fake grassroots groups funded by special interests. But are the forces whipping up the anti-health care frenzy really astroturf—or a new form of corporate-funded campaigning?

Most astroturf operations are semi-covert activities, precisely targeted at vulnerable or undecided lawmakers. Tried-and-true practices include phone banks in which paid callers posing as concerned voters read from prepared scripts, or phony citizens groups with few members, if any, but plenty of industry money to bankroll television ads and mailers. Particularly unscrupulous operators might mobilize a narrow constituency—like conservative Christians—on behalf of their corporate clients. The idea is to create the impressionof grassroots activism, but rarely to seriously attempt to influence broader public opinion. Michael Scanlon, a colleague of disgraced uberlobbyist Jack Abramoff, once captured the logic succinctly: “Simply put we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them.”

By that standard, some of the groups orchestrating town hall protests against Obama’s health care reform have adopted a new, hybrid model—one that blurs the lines between astroturf and grassroots activism. As far as it’s possible to tell, their financial base remains heavily dependent on corporate interests, and some of their tactics are familiar, too. But instead of furtively targeting selected lawmakers, they’re also mounting highly visible outreach efforts via public forums and Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking tools. In the process, they’re picking up at least some genuine support. It remains to be seen whether they can attract large numbers to their cause, but already they’ve helped to hijack the health care debate at a critical juncture. Here’s MoJo‘s guide to the major groups and their backers.

Americans for Prosperity

Americans for Prosperity is one of the most prominent groups opposing the Obama administration’s two key domestic policy goals: health care reform and cap and trade. The organization presents itself as a grassroots movement that espouses limited government. But a large portion of its money comes via staunch free-market conservative David Koch, part owner of Koch Industries, an oil and gas conglomerate that is perhaps the largest privately owned company in the US, with holdings in medical device and pharmaceutical companies.

Koch helped found AFP in 2003 and serves as chairman of its affiliated foundation. Its president is Tim Phillips, a master of the art of astroturf. Along with Ralph Reed, he cofounded Century Strategies, a PR and consulting firm known for effectively renting out Reed’s evangelical Christian allies to its clients—not to mention clients of Jack Abramoff. In 1999 and 2000, Century mobilized anti-gambling evangelicals to protest proposed casinos—but didn’t know Century was working for an Abramoff client, a casino-owning Indian tribe hoping to vanquish its competition. In a memo, an Abramoff colleague noted that Century’s Christian connections would ensure a “political effort that truly resembles a people’s movement” without the signs of a “paid political operation.”

This year, AFP is devoting its deep resources and strategic prowess to organize protests at Democratic health care town hall meetings, where activists hold signs like “Sorry Grandma, No Health Care for You.” But unlike most typical astroturf operations, AFP’s efforts seem intended to gather a broader base of supporters. To that end, the group makes use of social networking sites to reach out to potential followers. It posts information about local events and organizing strategies for its nearly 4,500 fans on Facebook, who share YouTube videos of protests. More than 1,000 people rallied at an August event in Scottsdale, Arizona, organized by AFP; the local fire department was called to handle overflow.

AFP sponsors two other groups advocating against the Obama administration’s proposed reforms, innocuously titled Patients United Now and Patients First. Both fund ads that make misleading claims. One Patients United Now television ad wrongly asserts that “Washington wants to bring Canadian-style health care to the US.” Patients First also launched a 13-state bus tour that wraps up at the end of August. At one stop a speaker compared proposed reforms to the Stalin and Hitler regimes because they would lead to “physician-assisted suicide”—a blatantly false claim. But these outlandish accusations have proved convincing to some: More than 206,000 people have signed Patients First’s petition opposing current health care reform proposals.

FreedomWorks

FreedomWorks is headed by former GOP House majority leader Dick Armey, who left government in 2003 and became a heavy-hitting lobbyist for DLA Piper, whose numerous corporate clients include pharmaceutical firms.

FreedomWorks grew from a group called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 and whose resume includes orchestrating “grassroots” opposition to cigarette taxes on behalf of Philip Morris. In 2006, the Washington Post reported that the group had once duped nearly 16,000 people into swelling its membership rolls: Brokers for a company called Medical Savings Insurance Co. pitched patients on discounted insurance, and those who signed up automatically became members of Citizens for a Sound Economy. (A small part of their monthly bill also went to the group, eventually netting it more than $600,000.) In 2003, a spokesman acknowledged that two-thirds of the organization’s money came from corporations, as well as corporate-funded conservative foundations. The next year, CSE morphed into FreedomWorks. Last year, the organization was identified as the creator of AngryRenter.com, an amateur-looking website presented as a spontaneous effort from ordinary Americans opposing government mortgage relief for homeowners.

The arrival of the Obama administration has ushered in a busy year for FreedomWorks, which played a pivotal role in engineering “tea party” protests against government spending. The group distributed organizational tips and talking points and helped to coordinate gatherings around the country that garnered breathless media coverage. FreedomWorks operatives have urged followers to mimic the tactics of the grandfather of community organizing—and inspiration to Barack Obama—Saul Alinsky.

This summer, FreedomWorks is using those tactics to defeat health care reform. It claims a membership of more than 770,000 people and an email list of 400,000 readers. Its website provides numerous resources, including an “August Recess Action Kit” to aid supporters in exposing “the real intentions and the economic ramifications of the Cap and Tax and health care reform legislation on the table.” FreedomWorks has plotted locations of town halls on Google Maps; one memo encouraged supporters to “rattle” lawmakers at these forums. FreedomWorks is also sponsoring a march on Washington on September 12.

In mid-August, Armey abruptly announced that he was leaving DLA Piper after a flurry of media reports raised questions about whether FreedomWorks activities were related to the goals of the firm’s big pharma clients.

Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights

The Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights describes itself as a “nonpartisan, grassroots coalition of patients, healthcare professionals, advocacy groups, and engaged citizens.” Its source of funding is unknown. However, according to Think Progress, PR for the organization is managed by the DCI Group, a political consulting firm with a long history of rustling up phony advocacy groups to serve the interests of its corporate clients.

DCI’s managing partners have deep experience in the political dark arts. Tom Synhorst, for instance, is a former associate of Ralph Reed (as well as a former aide to GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa). Synhorst and fellow founding partners Doug Goodyear and Tim Hyde spent years working for or with the tobacco conglomerate RJR Nabisco, where they supported “smokers’ rights” groups.

In the 1990s, DCI generated fake “citizen” letters opposing the breakup of Microsoft, then under investigation for antitrust violations. At least two of the letters were from dead people. During the Bush years, DCI created fake “grassroots” groups to champion one of the administration’s pet causes, privatizing Social Security. And in 2005, Freddie Mac paid DCI $2 million to drum up opposition to a bill that would have reined in the mortgage giant and its sister, Fannie Mae—three years before they nearly collapsed under the weight of their subprime loans.

Its resume also includes several health care campaigns: In 2002, DCI was hired by the Health Benefits Coalition—an HMO trade association—to defeat a proposed “patients’ bill of rights” in Congress. In 2003 and 2004, DCI worked with Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) to pass the GOP’s Medicare prescription drug bill, going so far as to pay health care consultants to find elderly people to speak positively about the proposal.

The face of the Coalition to Protect Patients Rights (CPPR) is Dr. Donald J. Palmisano, a former American Medical Association president whose idea of protecting patients’ rights consists of trying to limit their ability to sue doctors for malpractice. A longtime shill for the tort-reform movement, Palmisano sits on the board of the Doctors Company, a medical liability insurance company, and founded a claims review company that serves physicians and hospitals.

This year, CPPR’s efforts to kill health care reform are more visible and more ambitious than many previous initiatives linked with DCI. It is aggressively seeking supporters for the anti-reform cause via press events, op-eds, a Facebook page, and its Twitter feed, which so far has a modest 1,485 followers. (Sample tweet: “POTUS says you will be able to keep your insurance…but will your insurance survive competition with a public option?”) CPPR has also organized a group of doctors to tour the country warning of the perils of single-payer care. At one recent press conference that it sponsored, a physician said that in countries with government-run health care, the “sickest patients” are denied treatment.

60 Plus

60 Plus presents itself as a “grassroots senior citizen organization.” Although it claims to be nonpartisan, it was formed with help from stalwart conservative direct-mail king Richard Viguerie and refers to its honorary chairman Roger Zion as “one of Washington’s leading spokesmen for the conservative cause.” This year, it’s run a more traditional astroturf operation opposing the administration’s health care proposals.

During the Bush administration, 60 Plus was linked to several dubious political campaigns, and had ties to Jack Abramoff. The investigation of the lobbyist revealed that in 2001, Abramoff told one of his clients, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to give $25,000 intended for Tom DeLay’s political action committee to 60 Plus, although the tribe’s primary interest was in gambling legislation. (A lawyer for the tribe said that Abramoff advised them that the donation would help the tribe win clout with the Republican leadership in Congress.)

But for several years Big Pharma was 60 Plus’ major benefactor. According to a 2006 investigation by the AARP Bulletin, the pharmaceutical industry accounted for “virtually all of [60 Plus’] largest contributions” in the early years of this decade. In return, the group lobbied hard against state laws that would have reduced prescription-drug prices. On one occasion, the industry hired Bonner & Associates (a Washington strategic operation currently being investigated by Congress for forging letters opposing cap and trade and sending them to lawmakers). Bonner paid callers to read from scripts that identified them as members of 60 Plus and urged citizens to tell their governor to veto the legislation. Pfizer later admitted to funding the calls. Ken Johnson Sr., a vice president of PhRMA, told Mother Jones that the organization has not given 60 Plus any money since 2004.

This year, 60 Plus has been tirelessly working to torpedo Obama’s health care reform with a series of misleading and alarmist ads. On August 10, 60 Plus released a television ad warning that “The government—not doctors—will decide if older patients are worth the cost.” A recent mailing from 60 Plus told recipients that proposed changes to Medicare would mean “longer wait times at hospitals and doctors’ offices, less money for new treatments, restrictions on care, prescriptions and what’s best for you—the patient!” And a flyer distributed in Nebraska by 60 Plus features a picture of ailing elderly people and quotes Obama out of context saying, “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”

Conservatives for Patients Rights

CPR was founded by discredited hospital executive Rick Scott, who has emerged as perhaps the most dogged opponent of a Medicare-style public option that would cover uninsured Americans. To sell its message, CPR has enlisted the services of the same PR firm that brought you the Swiftboating of John Kerry: CRC Public Relations. So it should come as no surprise that its million-dollar ads on television and talk radio feature highly questionable assertions to scare citizens into sticking with the status quo. In one ad, an announcer ominously intoned that reform “could put a bureaucrat in charge of your medical decisions, not you.” A CPR flyer referred to the public option as “Patient Enemy #1.”

Scott claims that he will spend as much as $20 million dollars to defeat health care reform—he has already kicked in $5 million of his own funds to jump-start CPR’s media blitz. As Mother Jones has previously reported, he owns an urgent care company called Solantis. That gives him a direct incentive to block the expansion of health insurance coverage. To that end, CPR has sought to whip up frenzies at town hall forums during the August congressional recess, issuing alerts for meetings around the country and posting video footage of heated exchanges on its website. Earlier this month, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs denounced CPR for “organizing and manufacturing that anger.”

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==

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has a new job, running a think-tank she founded to appeal to Tea Party supporters. Liberty Central, according to Kenneth P. Vogel, writing in Politico, "appears to be positioning itself as ahybrid think tank/advocacy group/campaign arm for the tea party movement."

Thomas herself explained it this way to Human Events magazine, Vogel reports:

“I’m getting to know the Tea Party groups and the new citizen activists,” Thomas told:{ Human Events late last month. “What I think I can bring to the table is a connective (t)issue between the new people and the old people.”}:

On the Liberty Central Web site, visitors are urged to sign a "pledge to activism" that states the organization's commitment to small government, saying, in part:

In an effort to hold their government accountable to its constitutional limitations,many Americans have voiced their opposition to a “Big Government” agenda through protests and election upsets only to be blatantly ignored by many elected representatives,

Therefore, I pledge to be more informed and more active, and encourage others to do likewise, in order to maximize my impact and influence in preserving, protecting andpromoting liberty, freedom, and limited Constitutional government in America.

Call it the Great Convergence, this coming together of old-guard groups and extremists under the Tea Party brand -- something perhaps that only someone close to a major power center in the U.S. government could pull off. Unlike grassroots Tea Party organizations that struggle for donations, Thomas got off to a quick start last year with two large donations, according to Politico -- one for $50,000 and another for $500,000 -- whose sources the group declines to disclose. (One imagines that for certain players on the legislative field -- especially those signing on to cases that might come before the high court -- saying "I gave at the office" to the spouse of a sitting justice might not come so easily.)

AlterNet took a spin through Thomas' Web site, to see if we could get a sense of who might be showing her some love. What we found was a cadre of groups listed as "friends" -- ranging from the typical Tea Party Inc. types, such as FreedomWorks, to the downright radical, like Gun Owners of America, led by executive director Larry Pratt.

In our ongoing chronicle of right-wing events, we last left Larry Pratt at the 2nd Amendment March on Washington, where he appeared to be calling for war against the U.S. government. The 2nd Amendment March wasn't really a march at all, but a rally on the grounds of the Washington monument of some 2,000 gun owners that took place April 19 -- the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma Citybombing by self-styled militiaman Timothy McVeigh. (The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal office building took the lives of 168 innocents, including 19 children under the age of six.)

When Pratt took the stage on the grounds of the Washington monument about 15 years later, he could barely contain his ire for former President Bill Clinton, who was in office at the time of McVeigh's act of mass murder. On the day of the rally, Clinton published an op-ed that seemed to be aimed at the gun owners convening on the Mall in which he urged readers not to forget that McVeigh's act was born of the belief that government is the enemy. "[W]e must all assume responsibility for our words and actionsbeforethey enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged," he wrote.

At the gun rally, Pratt expressed his displeasure at Clinton's admonition, and at the attendance of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at an Oklahoma City ceremony commemorating the lives lost in the bombing. "I look around: it's so good to see all these terrorists out here," Pratt said to the gun activists. "Janet Napolitano, she figured, as governor of Arizona, that we didn't have a border problem, but she knows who the real enemy is. Ha, ha, ha, ha.[HIM/THEM? WHY?] And Bill Clinton's been runnin' cover for her, too. Watch out how you guys speak out there, you know, words can have consequences.

"Remember Oklahoma City?" Pratt continued. "Yeah, I do. And I also remember the Waco barbecue that your attorney general gave us. Thanks a lot...We're in a war. The other side knows they're at war, because they started it. They're comin' for our freedom, for our money, for our kids, for our property. They're comin' for everything because they're a bunch of socialists."

Is Larry Pratt's anti-government "war" the sort of activism that Ginni Thomas, CEO of Liberty Central and wife of a member of the high court, would condone? [YOU BETCHA]

It is highly unlikely that Pratt's bitter rhetoric is a secret to Ginni Thomas. Pratt is no stranger to controversy. He's an unabashed supporter of the militia movement; his1990 book, Armed People Victorious,is viewed by many in the movement as an inspirational text.

In 1996, Pratt was forced to resign his role as an adviser to Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign when it was revealed that, in 1992, he addressed a gathering of white supremacists in Estes, Colorado. Included on the roster of speakers that day were neo-Nazis and militia advocates, including Louis Beam, a former Texas Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan who had taken his cause over to the Aryan Nation organization. The meeting had been called by Pete Peters, then leader of the Christian Identitymovement, whose theology states that black people are subhuman and Jews are the spawn of Satan.

Pratt came to make clear his advocacy for unfettered gun rights. "The Second Amendment ain't about duck hunting," he told the crowd, according reporter Leonard Zeskind, reporting in *Rolling Stone. Pratt explained that he bought his first gun during the 1968 riots that engulfed Washington, D.C., in the wake of the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "If they'd had that assault rifle, so-called, for sale, and I'd seen that big old magazine there at the time, that's exactly what I would have bought," Pratt said, according to *Rolling Stone.

Pratt represents a kind of pivot point between the right-wing extreme and the right-wing establishment. While Pratt is cozy with Howard Phillips, the Christian Reconstructionist founder of the Constitution Party, he's also friendly with former House Majority Leader Richard Armey, the chairman of FreedomWorks, the kingpin of Tea Party Inc. astroturf groups. Armey once served on the advisory board of the now-defunct Family Foundation, an organization founded by Pratt, that housed an anti-immigrant group, English First (which still exists).

Ginni Thomas worked as an aide to Armey when he served in Congress in the GOP leadership, according to Politico. Today, Armey chairs FreedomWorks, the powerful Washington, D.C., organization that helped organize last summer's disruptions of town-hall meetings conducted by members of Congress about health care reform legislation. FreedomWorks also sponsored the stage program at the conclusion of last fall's912 march on Washington, and an anti-health care rally on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol last spring. Ginni Thomas also worked with FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe when both were on staff at the anti-regulatory lobbying group, the Chamber of Commerce.Like FreedomWorks, in last month's GOP primary runoff for Utah's U.S. Senate seat, Thomas' Liberty Central endorsed Tea Party candidate Mike Lee (the only candidate Liberty Central has endorsed so far).

Gun Owners of America is hardly the only eyebrow-raising friend listed on Liberty Central's Web site -- just the most extreme. Also nestled amid the group of 32 largely establishment outfits such as the Hudson Institute and the National Taxpayers Union, is Concerned Women for America, which has been on an anti-gay tear for the last two decades, and ParcBench.com, which currently features a post alleging that President Barack Obama committed treason when he presided over a session of the U.N. Security Council last fall --and that his administration won't prosecute violations of voting laws committed when white people are the victims.

Gun Owners of America frequently participates in lawsuits headed for the high court, and its attorney, William J. Olson, testified against the nomination of Elena Kagan to the bench of the high court at last week's Senate hearings. Likewise, Concerned Women for America also features an anti-Kagan post on the front page of its Web site. Not that people aren't entitled to their opinions, but it seems a bit untoward that the spouse of a sitting justice is running an organization that forges alliances with groups arrayed against her husband's next new colleague.

But more disturbing than that is the fact that Ginni Thomas, who shares her life with one of the most powerful men in the United States government, should use her social standing to recruit people to rage against the government in the company of the likes of Larry Pratt.

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819 anec or trend? calls to come back for emerg session fade

no lnx

Republican senator heckled and booed during town hall for blaming recent mass shootings on mental illness: ‘Do something!’

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Written by Alex Henderson August 20, 2019

Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who is up for reelection in 2020 and is among the Republican senators who is considered vulnerable, discussed the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio during a town hall event in her home state this week —and she was booed and heckled when she echoed President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and blamed “mental illness” for the killings.

Resisting calls for stricter gun control, Ernst told Iowa residents attending the town hall, “A lot of the incidents we’ve seen do come back to mental illness.” And the crowd immediately started booing.

Attendees clearly wanted stricter gun control, and Ernst was bombarded with shouts of “What about the guns?” and “Do something.”

In response, Ernst said that the U.S. has been through many hardships — and someone responded, “It’s not the same.” When Ernst commented that the U.S. was “short on” mental health resources, an Iowan shouted, “We’re short congresspeople that take action.”

Someone else shouted, “We need you to protect us.”

Ernst echoed the assertions of other Republicans when she said she was in favor of enforcing gun control laws already in existence. But she wouldn’t commit to passing stricter gun control laws.

Ernst received a 93% favorability rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA) during the 2014 election, when she was first elected to the U.S. Senate.

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an MD

had josh fox arrested

moved up to appropriations

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/vindictive-anti-marijuana-maryland-congressman-presses-felony-charges-against-activist-for-live-streaming-meeting-with-staffer/

omg 2x!

 Drug Reporter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

U.S. Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), representing Maryland’s Eastern Shore, has quite a reputation among marijuana reform activists—and not a good one. For years, Harris has done everything he can to block progressive reforms and has hamstrung the District of Columbia’s efforts to bring full pot legalization—meaning taxed and regulated sales, not just the legalization of possession and cultivation—to the nation’s capital.

But his latest nasty stunt only solidifies his reputation as not only a foe of marijuana law reform but as a first-class vindictive jerk. After a contentious protest last October led by local marijuana activists fed up with Harris’ interference in D.C. home rule, staffers and activists set up a meeting at Harris’ congressional office.

Among those attending was Salisbury University student activist Jake Burdett. Burdett briefly live-streamed part of the meeting without seeking anyone’s permission—a violation of Maryland’s “all-party consent” law requiring that any recordings only take place with the knowledge of the individuals involved.

According to Maryland Marijuana Justice (MDMJ), the activist group of which Burdett is a member, the student was not aware of the state law regarding recordings, and when he was made aware of it after the meeting, he apologized to the staffer involved and deleted the live stream the next day.

Harris could have accepted Burdett’s moves to atone for his innocent misdeed. Instead, he pressed felony charges against him—for revealing to the public what a public servant was saying in a government office on government time.

Adam Eidinger, the D.C. activist who led the successful 2014 legalization initiative and who grew so irritated with Harris’ interference in D.C. home rule that he moved to Harris’ district and co-founded MDMJ, is calling him out on it.

“Jake, who is a serious student leader, has a bright political future ahead of him that Representative Andy Harris wants to tarnish. In his honest attempt to provide the public with transparency into actions of a Congressional office that regularly insults marijuana reformers with false accusations, Jake’s livestream served as a conduit for the public to witness the endemic corruption in Salisbury,” he said in a statement.

“By deciding to throw the book at Mr. Burdett for an honest mistake, one that was fixed almost immediately, it shows how partisan and petty Congressman Harris has become. He clearly wants to chill citizen participation in government,” Eidinger added.

MDMJ co-founder Kris Furnish also weighed in on Burdett’s behalf.

“Is it unreasonable for a 20-year-old to think that it’s legal to record a staffer of a United States Congressman in a public space? In a society that supposedly values transparency in government, I do find it odd that Jake can be found guilty of the ‘crime’ of recording the staff of elected government representatives in a taxpayer-funded space,” he said.

“Rep. Harris wants to pretend to be victimized by a 20-year-old’s deleted livestream, while he supports the racist war on drugs that actually victimizes thousands of people a day by locking them up for the victimless crime of smoking marijuana, a non-addictive substance with many medicinal benefits.”

Harris’ hostility toward Burdett and the other MDMJ activists is matched only by his hostility toward their cause. Named by Forbes as one of the five worst House representatives on marijuana policy, Harris has used his position on the House Appropriations Committee, which has authority over District of Columbia spending, to try to stop the D.C. Council from decriminalizing pot possession, a move that led the city’s non-voting delegate to Congress, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), to call him “a tyrant.”

When District voters approved marijuana legalization at the ballot box in 2014, Harris was on hand again to try again to throw up obstacles. He couldn’t stop the city from ending marijuana prohibition, but he and his Republican colleagues in the House were able to block the District from regulating commercial sales.

It’s not just that he doesn’t believe in changing the marijuana laws; he has repeatedly evidenced a vindictive streak. When D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) allowed the legalization vote to go into effect despite objections from Republicans in Congress, Harris said she should be locked up.

In remarks made before the 2016 elections, Harris said if a Republican won the White House, he hoped he would prosecute the D.C. mayor: “You have to wait for the next administration. It’s a five-year statute of limitations,” Harris said. “All I can say is we’ll gather all the information. Maybe next the attorney general actually wants to enforce the law.”

He also isn’t a fan of democracy in the District: “We don’t take lightly interfering in D.C. home rule, but when they make clearly bad decisions…. This is where I think D.C. made a bad decision about its own rule and we have—the Congress has—the ultimate authority.”

Harris’ vindictiveness wasn’t aimed just at D.C., though; he also wanted to crack down on states whose voters had democratically chosen to legalize marijuana. “It is illegal under the law. This is an example of the administration not wanting to enforce the law,” he said.

Harris is a big fan of enforcing the law. In fact, he’s such a big fan that he’s using the law to hammer down a student activist who irritated—but did not harm—him or his staff.

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https://ballotpedia.org/Andrew_Harris

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https://www.congress.gov/member/andy-harris/H001052

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hmmn, src?

At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said he was "quite troubled" by a taxpayer-funded study that tarred the Tea Party movement as a pawn of Big Tobacco. Collins called the study, led by anti-smoking activist Stanton Glantz, "an unfortunate outcome," saying, "We thought we were funding a different kind of research when those grants were awarded." Science Insider reports that Collins was responding to concerns raised by Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) at a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee:

"They allege that somehow the Tea Party had its origin in the 1980s with tobacco funding, which is pretty incredible," Harris said. "Because I mean, I'm a Tea Party guy. I was there when it was established in 2009. I know the origins. I find it incredible that NIH funding is funding this," Harris said, adding that the study reflects "a partisan political agenda."

When the study was published in the journal Tobacco Control last month, one of Glantz's co-authors declared, "The records indicate that the Tea Party has been shaped by the tobacco industry and is not a spontaneous grassroots movement at all." As I noted at the time, Glantz et al. tried to make the case that the Tea Party was funded and largely created by Philip Morris but ended up arguing that anyone who disagrees with them on issues such as ObamaCare, smoking bans, and cigarette taxes is carrying water for Big Tobacco, even if he does not realize it.

Glantz told Science Insider he was "very troubled" by Collins' comments. After all, when Glantz said in his grant proposal that he planned to study the influence of "third parties" funded by cigarette manufacturers, the NIH should have realized that included political hatchet jobs aimed at discrediting supporters of limited government as shills or dupes of Big Tobacco. It's not his fault that the people he attacked happen to be critics of the current president, which makes it look like the Obama administration is using taxpayer money to pay for opposition research.

[Thanks to Christopher Snowdon for the tip.]

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Legislator Grills NIH Over Tobacco Grant

2013-03-06 11:10

8 Comments

A research grant sometimes can lead a scientist in a new direction. But a shift into politically sensitive territory can put the federal funding agency in hot water with Congress.

That's what happened yesterday to Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), at a hearing on how agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services are dealing with tight budgets. One legislator wanted to know why an NIH grantee's research on tobacco control delved into the origins of the Tea Party. Although conservative lawmakers often take issue with certain NIH grants, what was surprising was that Collins said he was troubled by it as well.

The U.S. House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee on health and human services, labor, and education met to ask the directors of five agencies about ways to avoid duplicating research in a tight budget environment. Toward the end of the 2-hour hearing, Representative Andy Harris (R-MD) asked about a specific National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded study tracing Tea Party's origins to groups supported by tobacco companies (video around 1:51 here). "They allege that somehow the Tea Party had its origin in the 1980s with tobacco funding, which is pretty incredible," Harris said. "Because I mean, I'm a Tea Party guy. I was there when it was established in 2009. I know the origins. I find it incredible that NIH funding is funding this," Harris said, adding that the study reflects "a partisan political agenda."

"I, too, am quite troubled about this particular circumstance," Collins replied. He pointed out that the lead author, University of California, San Francisco, researcher Stanton Glantz, has been an NCI grantee for 14 years and is considered a leading researcher on tobacco control. The paper, which listed support from an NCI training grant and an NCI research grant, also included a disclaimer that the NCI played no role in choosing the topic of the study.But, Collins added, "We thought we were funding a different kind of research when those grants were awarded."

Harris fired back: "What is within the NIH's abilities to, shall we say, make sure that this researcher or this institution doesn't play fast and loose with taxpayer money in this kind of research?"

"It's a very appropriate question and I'm struggling with it, to be honest," Collins replied. "The tension here is both to recognize that [the paper] is an unfortunate outcome, but also not to put NIH in a position of basically playing a nanny over top of everything our grantees do."

The study, published last month inTobacco Control, received coverage in both the liberal and conservative press. In it, Glantz and co-authors make the case that two nonprofit groups funded by tobacco companies to fight tobacco taxes and no-smoking laws were among the earliest supporters of what became the Tea Party.

Glantz said he is "very troubled" by Collins's remarks. His grant proposal didn't hide anything, he says. Written several years ago, it discussed his plan to study the influence on policymaking of "third parties" funded by the tobacco industry. "We didn't go looking for the Tea Party. It emerged naturally in the course of the research," he says, just as a cell biologist's research grant might lead in an unexpected direction.

It's not the first time Glantz's research has drawn hostility from Congress. In 1995, House appropriators voted to defund his NCI grant, but their recommendation was stripped from the final spending bill that year. "This is déjà vu all over again," Glantz says.

http://news:{.sciencemag.:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:org/2013/03/legislator-grills-nih-over-tobacco-grant

==

had josh fox arrested, did not allow ABC to film public hearing on fracking, tho lobbyists test.

Flanked moderate sorta green gop;

==

career:

1989 - 2014 Total Receipts:	$7,054,371
1989 - 2014 Total Spent:	$6,773,178
Debts:	$97,480
Last Report:	Sunday, March 31, 2013

Top 5 Contributors, 2010 - 2014

...view more data

Top 5 Industries, 2010 - 2014

...view more data

Andy Harris on Environment
Click here for 3 full quotes on Environment OR background on Environment. Stop considering manure as pollutant or hazardous. (Sep 2011) Member of House Natural Resources Committee. (Mar 2011) Rated 25% by HSLF, indicating an anti-animal welfare voting record. (Jan 2012)

Josh Fox, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Gasland" was taken into custody by Capitol Hill police this morning, along with his crew, after Republicans objected to their presence, according to Democratic sources present at the hearing. The meeting of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment had been taking place in room 2318 of the Rayburn building.

--career;

-

--

13 green energy cuts U.S. clean energy initiatives in other countries. The EERE's international program partners with global leaders and organizations to develop renewable energy and efficiency measures mainly in poorer countries. This amendment cuts off funds for the program, and it cites Obama's plan to spend $600,000 to help China and India build sustainable cities as the leading reason. Sponsor: Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.)

Do we really want our elected representatives set up as puppets of groups from outside Maryland?  Rep. Andy Harris is one such puppet! The following is a post on RightWingWatch.org, from 2008, about our Congressman, Andy “Dr. No” Harris.  It shows how misleading his support was and how he still panders to outside forces, instead of working on issues that matter to his constituents. He has given in to being a puppet of the extreme right-wing radicals who have funded his campaigns and ordered him how to vote in Congress, not for the best interests of his district, but for the social agenda of those puppeteers, who are based outside of Maryland.

    This week, the Club for Growth declared victory, as incumbent Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, lost the Republican primary to the Club’s handpicked candidate. The Club’s PAC, which has carved out a niche for itself, with right-wing primary challenges, spent more than $600,000 on the race, mostly with TV ads calling Gilchrest a “liberal.”

    But the Club for Growth, known for its hard-line supply-side economics, wasn’t the only outside group giving a boost to challenger Andy Harris. “It is imperative that Dr. Harris win this contest!” declared Focus on the Family founder, James Dobson, who trumpeted right-wing complaints about Gilchrist.

http://www:{.sourcewatch.:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:org/index.php?title=Andy_Harris

stub:

Andrew P. Harris is the Republican candidate in the 2008 congressional elections primary for the 1st Congressional District (map) of Maryland. On February 12th he defeated incumbent Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.).^[1]

Positions, record and controversies

Bio

2008 elections

Harris won the Republican nomination by defeating Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.) in the 2008 congressional primary.^[2][3][4]

Money in politics

Information on this candidate's 2010 fundraising is not yet available.

Committees and affiliations

Committees

Harris will be assigned committees if and when he is elected to Congress.

Affiliations

More background data

Contact

Andy Harris for Congress

122 South Main Street

Bel Aire, MD 21014

443-553-4794

Email: info@andyharris08.com

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

• 2008 U.S. congressional elections
  • 2008 U.S. congressional election dates
• Portal:Maryland and the U.S. Congress

Sources

1. ↑ "2008 Primary Results," The Baltimore Sun, February 13, 2008.
2. ↑ 2008 Race Tracker page on Maryland's 1st Congressional District
3. ↑ Andy Harris campaign website
4. ↑ "2008 Primary Results," The Baltimore Sun, February 13, 2008.

Wikipedia also has an article on Andy Harris. This article may use content from the Wikipedia article under the terms of the GFDL.

External resources

• 2008 Race Tracker page on Maryland's 1st Congressional District
• Andy Harris campaign website

External articles

• Tom LoBianco, "Funds soar for Gilchrest's seat," Washington Times, July 10, 2007.

Categories: Maryland and the U.S. Congress | Defeated 2008 House candidate | Congresspedia | Stubs | Republican Party (USA)

Congressman Andy Harris Is Terrible

You know who's terrible? Congressman Andy Harris, of Maryland, is terrible. Here's why!

Harris, a freshman House Republican, served in the Maryland Senate for thirteen years, where he spent much of his time posturing for national office. After establishing his culture war bonafides, he decided to run for Congress in 2008. He primaried the 18-year congressional veteran Wayne Gilchrest, one of the last moderate Republicans around. Gilchrest held some awful policy positions, in Harris' view: He wanted to end the Iraq war at some point in the future, and he didn't think the Chesapeake Bay should be converted into a sludge pit. Harris successfully defeated Gilchrest, but then lost the safe Republican seat in the general election to Democrat Frank Kratovil. This was in a district which John McCain won by 19 points.

Harris returned to the Maryland Senate but never really stopped campaigning for national office, and he was quick to attach himself to whatever useless wedge issue bullshit he could. Here's a delightful example. When the Maryland state government was in its final days of the 2009 legislative session, working quickly to reach a difficult budget compromise, Harris heard that some students in a club at the University of Maryland were planning to screen the big-budget porno Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge on campus, with some dumb college-y panel about sex and gender and whatever afterwards. You know, just the usual college kids watching nakey-people stuff. Harris, however, was so offended by this that he threatened to withhold the university's entire $424 million in state funding unless the screening was canceled. He was ultimately victorious, but not after annoying all of his colleagues and holding up a budget agreement.

Harris ultimately was able to ride the Tea Party wave to victory last year in his second congressional run. He almost instantly made a terrible name for himself, when he was caught whining about having to wait a couple of weeks for his sweet congressional health insurance policy to kick in during one of the new House Republican majority's first meetings.

And now Andy Harris is back in the news as one of the anti-compromise Tea Party Republican holdouts who humiliated Speaker John Boehner last night with his terrible demands. One of them, The Hill reports, was that Boehner's debt ceiling bill offered too much money for Pell Grants, the cheap program that gives poor people some money to go to college:

Legislation crafted by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to raise the debt limit by $900 billion would directly appropriate $9 billion for Pell Grants in 2012 and another $8 billion in 2013.

This has shocked some conservative House freshmen who say they were elected to cut spending, not increase it. Some House Republicans think of it as being akin to welfare.

"I really don't understand why we're increasing spending in a bill supposed to be cutting spending," said Rep. Andy Harris, a freshman Republican from Maryland. "It was negotiated without the input of a lot of members."

Andy Harris is terrible.

http://gawker.com/5826041/congressman-andy-harris-is-terrible

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Rachel Maddow on the 2000 Florida 'Brooks Brothers Riot' with The Nation's Chris Hayes. MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show (aired: 08/04/09) the nation mag

link to brooks bros by maddow and chris hayes

trms, paid by B-C comm sez IRS

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ELIANA JOHNSON March 31, 2014 4:00 AM @ELIANAYJOHNSON A years-long campaign is bearing fruit. In one of the ads Americans for Prosperity (AFP) has put on the air this year, a thirtysomething actress stands against a white backdrop and looks into the camera. “People don’t like political ads,” she says plaintively. “I don’t like them either. But health care isn’t about politics, it’s about people, and millions of people have lost their health insurance, millions of people can’t see their own doctors, and millions are paying more and getting less.” At the close, a narrator urges viewers to “tell Mary Landrieu to stop thinking about politics and start thinking about people.” Such ads have also run against Mark Pryor in Arkansas, Mark Udall in Colorado, and incumbent Democratic House members in Arizona, Florida, and New Hampshire. Ads like the “white ad,” as it has become known, are not new to 2014. They are part of a sustained assault against Obamacare mounted with the help of the donor network organized by Charles and David Koch and the array of social-welfare groups it funds. The ads themselves, which have inflamed Democrats this election season, represent five years of knowledge, accumulated through polls and focus groups, about how to use the health-care issue to pull Americans into the GOP camp.

With AFP having spent over $30 million so far this year to bring down sitting Democratic senators, the ads also symbolize the changing nature of American politics. Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, unlimited outside spending by 501(c)(4) social-welfare groups has finally allowed Republicans to match the political muscle of labor unions, whose spending was also blown open by the decision, but which have long poured money into Democratic coffers. That newfound equity is one reason why the AFP ads have sent Democrats into a tailspin and led them to make the ads, and two of the people funding them, a major campaign issue of 2014. Senate majority leader Harry Reid devoted much of a news conference and an entire speech on the Senate floor to attacking the Koch brothers, calling their efforts “un-American” and accusing them of trying to rig the political system in their favor. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has launched a digital campaign around the rallying cry “The GOP is addicted to Koch!” “The Koch Brothers have already spent $30 million this year savaging Democratic Senate candidates in an effort buy a U.S. Senate that is good for their family and bad for just about every other family in America,” the group said. AFP president Tim Phillips dismisses attacks like this as the “villain approach” to politics and says he’s not only skeptical of their efficacy but finds them morally repugnant. “If you google AFP, you’ll find that we’ve never gone after George Soros. It’s the right of every American to be involved in the political process — and frankly, the responsibility.”

***

The Koch network’s anti-Obamacare assault began in 2009 with Sean Noble, a former chief of staff to Arizona congressman John Shadegg and then an adviser to the Koch brothers, and Randy Kendrick, the wifeof Arizona Diamondbacks part-owner Ken Kendrick and a prominent donor to the Kochs’ formidable fundraising network. Noble had worked with Arizona state legislators in 2008 on Proposition 101, an amendment to the state constitution that would have prohibited employer and individual mandates in health insurance. When it was defeated, Noble says, Kendrick urged him to take the health-care fight national. “Randy Kendrick said, ‘Who do I have to give money to? What organizations are doing this?’” Noble tells me. When he surveyed the landscape, Noble found only 501(c)(3) groups such as the Galen Institute and the Pacific Research Institute, which, unlike 501(c)(4)s, are prohibited from participating in campaign-related activity. There weren’t any groups operating in the (c)(4) space devoted to putting the brakes on a national health bill. For Kendrick, events added a sense of urgency to the cause.

It was November of 2008: President Obama had won the election, and rumors swirled that he was set to nominate former South Dakota senator Tom Daschle to serve as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services — a nomination eventually derailed by news that Daschle had for years failed to pay taxes on a car and driver lent to him by a wealthy friend. Kendrick had read Daschle’s 2008 book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis and saw it as a blueprint for the legislation the Obama administration would look to enact. She was alarmed. Daschle noted polls and research showing that the political climate in 2008 was more favorable to a fundamental reform of the nation’s health-care system than it was in the early 1990s, when Hillarycare sputtered out. He pointed to growing support for “a so-called individual mandate” and urged readers to help overcome “the mistaken belief that we have the best health care in the world.”

The result of Kendrick and Noble’s efforts was the Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR), which was incorporated in April 2009 and funded largely through donations from the Koch network. The two attended a June 2009 Koch donor seminar in Aspen, Colo., where, Noble says, a federal takeover of health care was for the first time introduced to donors as an issue of urgent importance. Before lunch on the third and final day of the seminar, Noble says, Kendrick delivered an “impassioned speech” on the topic. “People were moved to tears by how invested she was in this,” Noble says, and at the lunch that followed her remarks, donors spontaneously pledged $13 million to the cause. Since then, similar lunches have raised over $100 million. *** With that largesse, CPPR produced dozens of ads that targeted hundreds of Democratic congressmen in the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans regained 63 seats and recaptured the House majority in the largest midterm romp since 1938. Noble coordinated the disbursement of over $50 million to several other groups that paid to put the ads on the air: Americans for Prosperity, the 60 Plus Association, Americans for Job Security, Americans for Limited Government, and the American Future Fund. Two years later, Californiaofficials? levied a $1 million fine on CPPR when they determined the group failed to disclose the intermediary sources of independent expenditures it made to oppose two ballot propositions in the state. CPPR funneled money to multiple groups, Noble says, both to protect the anonymity of donors and because IRS regulations prohibit any individual (c)(4) group from spending more than 50 percent of its time on candidate-related political activity. 

In 2010, though, the activity of the groups was extraordinarily well-orchestrated, with no two groups airing ads in the same congressional district. Attack ads against Democratic incumbents blanketed the country: The 60 PlusAssociation spent to air ads in Arizona’s 1st congressional district, Florida’s 2nd and 24th, Indiana’s 2nd, Minnesota’s 8th, New York’s 20th, Ohio’s 16th, Pennsylvania’s 3rd, and Wisconsin’s 3rd and 8th, for example, while Americans for Job Security put up ads in New York’s 24th, North Carolina’s 2nd and 8th, Ohio’s 18th, and Virginia’s 9th. The American Future Fund put up spots in Alabama’s 2nd, Colorado’s 7th, New Mexico’s 1st, and Washington’s 2nd.

To craft and produce the ads,Noble brought in GOP pollster and wordsmith Frank Luntz and ad guru Larry McCarthy, the latter famous for producing the 1988 Willie Horton ad that helped to sink Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign. In a series of focus groups, Luntz concluded that ads with an “ideological” feel to them wouldn’t work. “They weren’t credible or relevant to people in their day-to-day lives,” he says. “There was one political operative who thought rationing was the big issue. That wasn’t conceivable to people.” Neither was talk of death panels. Instead, Luntz found that emotional appeals were more effective and that women were considered more credible than men on the issue. “Women are more focused on quality of life and peace of mind,” Luntz says.

This year, all of AFP’s testimonial ads feature middle-class women speaking from their homes: Donna Marzullo and Helen DePrima in New Hampshire, Shannon Wendt and Julie Boonstra in Michigan, and a woman identified as Wanda in Marion, Ark. (Fact-checkers have called into question the accuracy of the testimonials delivered in some of these ads, as well as Reid’s contention that they are “absolutely false” and “made up from whole cloth.”) “What Frank did,” Noble says, “is he took political guys like me and like Larry and had to kind of shake us into understanding that we needed to treat this differently than we would a political campaign, that we had to do this not by beating someone over the head but by persuading.” Luntz, he says, “took the strengths of our arguments and amplified them.” CPPR’s initial efforts were aimed at preventing Obamacare’s passage, and one of the first ads Noble and McCarthy produced was a personalized warning about the dangers of nationalized health care. Over Memorial Day weekend in 2009, it went on the air in eight states that were home to crucial members of the Senate Finance Committee — including Republicans Susan Collins and Chuck Grassley — which was responsible for voting the bill that would become the Affordable Care Act out of committee and into the full Senate.

In the ad, “Survivor,” paid for by one of AFP’s 501(c)(4) arms, PatientsUnitedNow, Ontario native Shona Holmes told viewers about her experience with the Canadian health-care system. “I survived a brain tumor, but if I had relied on my government for health care, I’d be dead,” she said. “I am a Canadian citizen, and as my brain tumor got worse, my government health-care system told me I had to wait six months to see a specialist. In six months, I would have died.” The ad blanketed the airwaves on Fox News; CNN’s Dana Bash flew to Ontario to interview Holmes and tell her story; and Jake Tapper, then of ABC News, took questions about her case to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. Noble and his team at CPPR, which functioned out of the office of his consulting firm, DC London, in Washington, D.C., also worked with Americans for Prosperity and several other groups to turn out voters opposed to the emerging bill at the town-hall forums that senators were hosting in their home states during the 2009 August recess.

“We knew we had to make that summer absolute hell,” Noble says. Local AFP chapters activated their networks, and CPPR placed calls to seniors who were considered Republican base voters, people over the age of 65 who had voted consistently in GOP primaries, urging them to come out to the town halls and arming them with talking points. The Cook Political Report wondered in September 2009 whether 2010 would prove to be the year “angry white seniors” decided the election in favor of Republicans, much the way “angry white males” were said to have turned the tide in 1994. “We packed these town halls with people who were just screaming about this thing,” Noble recalls. Scenes from those meetings, of constituents blowing up at their elected representatives and of public forums descending into chaos, blanketed the news throughout August. At a forum in Philadelphia where Arlen Specter (since deceased) appeared with Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the crowd, with spectators lining the walls, exploded when Specter admitted that he hadn’t personally read the legislation — which ran over 1,000 pages — but instead had assigned it out to his staff. “We expected we could turn out 250 people there,” Noble says. “Over 1,000 showed up.” “You have to make judgments very fast,” Specter explained as the audience shouted him down. Sebelius didn’t make any friends when she jumped to his defense. “The Senate bill isn’t written,” she said, “so don’t boo the senator for not reading a bill that isn’t written.” The crowd booed her in turn.

*** CPPR’s strategy changed when the House passed the Affordable Care Act and President Obama signed it into law in March 2010. Noble and his team set their sights on returning the House to the GOP. “We made a deliberate recommendation that you gotta focus on the House,” Noble says. “That’s where this bill passed. Pelosi broke so many arms of Democrats that had no business voting for that bill. Obamacare clearly was the watershed moment that provided the juice to deliver the majority back to the Republicans in the House.” On June 8, 2010, an Excel spreadsheet listed 64 Democratic congressmen in order of the likelihood of their defeat. The list of targets expanded to 88 in June and to 105 in August. Each of the House districts identified was given a“win potential” between 1 and 5 and a score between 1 and 40 based on the voting record of each member and the composition of the district, among other things. The 105 candidates were ultimately divided into three tiers based on the likelihood of a GOP victory, and resources were allotted accordingly. On Election Day, Republicans snatched 48 of the 50 seats in “tier 1” from Democrats and 61 of the 80 seats in the top two tiers. Noble and company went up with ads in June 2010, earlier than outside groups had ever gone on the air before.

By August, some of the most vulnerable Democrats had been damaged so badly that the ads were no longer needed. That was the case in Colorado’s fourth district, where Democratic incumbent Betsy Markey was running for reelection againstRepublican Cory Gardner.For a week in June and two weeks in August, Americans for Prosperity ran an ad against Markey that featured a series of her constituents, one of whom declared, “Markey betrayed us by voting for a government health-care plan.” With Markey’s own polling showing her approval rating at 38 percent, Noble says, “we did not spend another dime in that race from August until Election Day.” Between June and November, CPPR and the constellation of groups to which it disbursed millions of dollars in funds sought to tie Democrats not to President Obama, who inspires warm feelings among most Americans, but to House speaker Nancy Pelosi. They used her name like a dirty word.

The 60 Plus Association told Floridians that “Alan Grayson and Suzanne Kosmas are putting Nancy Pelosi’s liberal agenda ahead of seniors.” The American Future Fund told South Dakota voters that Stephanie Herseth Sandlin “votes to support Nancy Pelosi’s agenda more than 90 percent of the time.” Americans for Job Security put constituents from North Carolina’s second congressional district on the air to tell voters that their congressman, Bob Etheridge, “voted for Nancy Pelosi’s health-care plan.” Luntz’s research had demonstrated the need to tie Democratic congressmen to a more national figure. President Obama and Harry Reid proved far less likely than Pelosi to push swing voters into the Republican camp. “When we tied them to Pelosi, swing voters were more likely to vote against them 65 percent of them time,” Noble says. “She was absolutely toxic for her conference with swing voters.” Surprisingly, she produced a more negative reaction among women than did Reid and Obama. The political climate was so hostile to Democrats that Noble wound up running ads against Democrats who fell into tier 3, incumbents he’d determined it would be difficult to pick off. “There was some interesting stretching of the field that no one thought was possible,” he says. In late October, the 60 Plus Association dumped $100,000 into an ad buy in Minnesota’s eighth congressional district, where incumbent Jim Oberstar, the chairman of the Transportation Committee, had served for over three decades.

His opponent, a young Navy captain and virtually a political unknown, was deeply underfunded. The spot featured a picture of Oberstar with a grinning Pelosi looming in the background. “He votes with his party 97 percent of the time,” a narrator said, “for $500 billion in Medicare cuts, Nancy Pelosi’s budgets, and debts future generations can’t afford.” Cook Political Report analyst David Wasserman noted that “even many local Republicans can’t get their head around the idea that Navy Captain Chip Cravaack, who in July had $24,000 in the bank to Oberstar’s $1.1 million and warned that the U.S. was headed towards socialism under President Obama, is a serious threat to the 36-year House veteran and Transportation Committee chair.” On Election Day, Cravaack eked out a victory by 1.6 percentage points.

***

AFP has taken the lead in the ad wars again this year. The Center to Protect Patient Rights, under Noble’s leadership, recently rebranded itself as American Encore, a group that will focus on a broader set of issues including the proposed IRS regulations and the free-enterprise system. AFP’s goal is to help recapture the Senate. AFP president Tim Phillips thinks it’s possible to do so by pressing the Obamacare issue. “Some say the further you get from the passage of a law, the tougher it gets to move America,” he tells me, “but Obamacare is different because the impact is evolving, Americans’ experiences with the law are evolving, and most of them are bad.” Noble puts it more sharply. “What we warned people was going to happen is now happening,” he says, “so it’s a natural extension of the debate. Now we’re saying ‘We told you so’ without saying ‘We told you so.’” In the ads themselves, warnings from Canadians like Shona Holmes have been replaced by testimonials offered on a state-by-state basis from those who say they’ve been hurt by the health-care law. AFP has linked local victims with their lawmakers’ support for the bill. Noble is confident that just as the issue allowed Republicans to recapture the House in 2010, it will give the GOP the “juice” to reclaim the Senate in 2014. “It’s kind of like this great story,” he says. “We don’t know how it’s going to end, but Democrats are going to lose twice over it.” Much to the chagrin of angry Democrats, the ad war is one that shows no signs of letting up. According to Phillips, “We think of this as year five of what very well could be a decade-long or more effort to defeat government-run health care.” If Harry Reid thinks he’s fed up with the Kochs now, he may just be getting the first taste of what their political network has in stor Read more at:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374580/inside-koch-funded-ads-giving-dems-fits-eliana-johnson Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374580/inside-koch-funded-ads-giving-dems-fits-eliana-johnson

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374580/inside-koch-funded-ads-giving-dems-fits-eliana-johnson

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tea_Party_protests,_2009

AP

date?

Secretive front group battles health bill

Americans for Quality and Affordable Healthcare is trying to shape opinion

WASHINGTON — One operative tried to enlist trade groups in Maine to oppose government-run health coverage. Another helped a member of a Las Vegas conservative group appear on local talk radio to criticize the proposal. A third persuaded a Louisiana activist to post an opinion piece on a conservative blog.

These below-the-radar activities were the handiwork of a law firm in Charlotte, N.C., that operates a secretive group called Americans for Quality and Affordable Healthcare. The organization's sponsors remain a mystery — its Web site offers no clues, and the law firm won't say.

In a year that has seen hundreds of millions of dollars spent on health care lobbying and TV ads, the advocacy group's impact is hard to gauge since the full scope of its operations is unclear. But its activities illustrate how some are furtively trying to shape public and congressional opinion through front groups — seemingly independent organizations that pursue their founders' goals while masking their identity.

One clue to the mystery group may lie in its goals: to oppose any government-run insurance option, the approach favored by President Barack Obama and most Democrats, and to support requiring all Americans to buy insurance.

Those aims match two of the health insurance industry's top priorities. Several industry officials disavowed any knowledge of the group and said they're not behind it, including the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans, Blue Cross-Blue Shield of North Carolina, and other large national and North Carolina insurers.

‘They want to stay in the background’

Presented evidence that the activities in Maine, Nevada and Louisiana involved employees of Moore & Van Allen, one of North Carolina's larger law firms, the firm's spokesman Matthew French acknowledged the connection and said the firm runs the health care group for clients. He declined to name them, but he referred to "member companies of AQAH," the group's acronym.

"They want to stay in the background and off the front page," said French. "They want the message to be the important thing."

Moore & Van Allen has more than 300 attorneys and numbers financial, manufacturing, technology and health companies among its clients, although it won't name them. It says they include "some of America's foremost hospitals, multi-institutional health care systems, physician groups, specialty providers, lenders and insurers."

French would not discuss the health group's financing or provide much detail about its activities, saying it gives materials to like-minded organizations to distribute to their members.

The three states where the group's activities have been noticed are focal points of the health care fight. Nevada is home to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat who is putting together the Senate's health overhaul bill. Louisiana and Maine are represented by two senators viewed as swing votes: Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.

French acknowledged the group is hoping its activities will build pressure on lawmakers.

"Obviously we want to educate to an end purpose. Otherwise we're just kind of preaching to trees," he said.

No clues to sponsorship

The group's Web site says publicly run insurance would "drive all the major players out of the healthcare market," and it includes a page that lets people easily e-mail members of Congress to express those views.

The site does not reveal its sponsorship or provide an address or phone number, unusual for an Internet site trying to arouse public action. Even the owner of the site's Internet domain name is hidden, officially registered to Domains By Proxy Inc., a Scottsdale, Ariz., company that shields the real owner's identity.

French said the three employees of the law firm whose activities for the group were discovered work for the firm's government affairs division, which the practice's Web site says helps clients "shape public opinion, defeat adverse legislation." None of the three is listed as an attorney.

The operatives' activities have included:

• Several weeks ago, Lindsay Schroeder, a legislative aide at the law firm, approached the Maine Hospital Association in Augusta to see if it would participate in panel discussions about the health care overhaul, said association spokeswoman Mary Mayhew. "I assume she was trying to get some media coverage. I'm sure a part of it was to generate grass-roots activity," Mayhew said. Officials of at least three other Maine trade groups described similar visits around the same time, but they could not recall the woman's name or affiliation. All said they declined involvement.
• A deputy director of the firm's government affairs team, Andrew Smith, helped a representative of the conservative Nevada Policy Research Council appear on a Las Vegas talk radio show to discuss health care, said council spokesman Andy Matthews.
• Reid McMillan, another deputy director of government affairs, e-mailed an opinion column the health care group distributes to Ellen Carmichael, a conservative activist in Baton Rouge, La., who got it posted on a conservative blog called Healthcare Horserace.

Defending ‘Tea Party Profiteers,’ Odom Tells Activists ‘We Should Reward Them With Our Pocketbooks"

By Lee Fang on Feb 5, 2010 at 6:00 pm

In a blog post yesterday, Republican strategist Eric Odom defended his tea party business strategy in response to Think Progress’ reporting on Tea Party Profiteers –- Republican consultants, political operatives, and others trying to take advantage of the tea party movement to make a profit and advance a special-interest agenda. To Odom, it is completely ethical for him and his business partners to “have created a means through which they can pay some bills through their activism":

And even more absurd is the fact that some tea party activists within the “free market” movement are upset that some entrepreneurs have created a means through which they can pay some bills through their activism. [...] But more importantly, we as “free market” activists should applaud their work in writing these books and we should reward them with our pocket books, not balk at them for doing so.

Odom runs countless tea-party-themed websites around the country, many of them made to appear organic, or locally organized. Through his two for-profit companies, Strategic Activism, LLC and American Liberty Alliance, Odom is able to collect money from unknown sources while setting the agenda and the giving out marching orders for the tea party community forums he controls. As the AP reported, lobbyist Reid McMillian helped write the anti-health reform content for “Healthcare Horserace,” one of Odom’s many websites.

A longtime operative who made a career building what he described as Republican ��stealth” ��attack sites,” Odom recently proclaimed that the tea party movement should work exclusively to elect Republicans this year, writing, “the Republican Party must be our vessel in 2010.” Indeed, his business partner at Strategic Activism, Allen Fuller, runs a GOP public relations firm called Flat Creek Public Affairs where he helps to direct tea parties into volunteering and fundraising for Republican candidates.

Odom and his fellow profiteers are trying to pull off an elaborate scam. They posture as independents and activists, but they are truly Republican hacks, working largely for big business special interests. Instead of protesting the hegemony of an international corporation — as the original Boston tea party did against the London-based East India Company -- they are helping to continue a Bush-era society where corporations like Goldman Sachs have unbridled power.

For instance, former Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), another self-proclaimed tea party leader, rails against the Wall Street bailout and efforts to rebuild the foundations of the economy, even though his own lobbying firm represented AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch during the bailouts. Armey, who is still paid a lobbyist salary of at least $550,00 a year, told the New York Times that although he does not believe in “death panels” or other “exaggerations,” he encourages others to spread falsehoods to advance his agenda. Armey’s willful lying is instructive for understanding the profiteers: in the most condescending way, they are exploiting the tea party movement to line their own pockets.

New York Times Looks at Tea Party, Grassroots vs. Reid in Nevada

By Elizabeth Crum | 9:27 pm April 5th, 2010

“Tea Party Groups Make Harry Reid Target #1″ says the headline of this piece in the NYT. A few excerpts, the first about Tea Party activist-organizer Eric Odom who recently moved to Nevada to set up his Defeat Reid HQ:

But come the midterm elections, what may be more significant is what is happening here, in a dark condominium where the Home Depot tags are still on the lawn chairs that double as indoor seating for guests.

The blinds drawn against the desert sun, this is the new burrow of Eric Odom, a chief organizer of the first nationwide Tea Parties last year. Mr. Odom moved here a few weeks ago with his fianc���e and a blogger sidekick to mobilize the state’s Tea Party groups for the midterms. By training activists in get-out-the-vote tactics like the “voter bombs" that helped Scott Brown become the new Republican senator from Massachusetts, they are hoping to unseat Nevada’s senior senator and the Democratic leader, Harry Reid.

In a matter of weeks, this state has become ground zero for Tea Party members, who understand that as a symbol of the movement’s power, you cannot get much bigger than beating the Senate��s top Democrat.

Yep. A Reid defeat would be a big, fluffy feather-in-cap for both national and Nevada Tea Partiers. So various groups are doing their grassrootsy thing, including the Tea Party Express which kicked off its third cross-country bus tour last weekend in Searchlight. Their parent organization, Our Country Deserves Better PAC, spent $350K in the last few weeks of Massachusetts Miracle Brown’s campaign, and they have vowed to target the Reid race in much the same way.

Eric Odom is a conservative new media strategist. He is a leader in the DontGo movement and is President of Strategic Activism LLC^[1], an internet consulting firm. Eric also manages NewsPlatoon, Blogivists, and is Director of RootsHQ 2009.

Throughout 2008, Odom worked on a variety of new media projects for the Sam Adams Alliance.

Odom previously worked for Citizen Outreach^[2].

In 2007, Odom coordinated the 2007 Conservative Leadership Conference in Reno, Nevada.

Right-Wing Harassment Strategy Against Dems Detailed In Memo: ‘Yell,’ ‘Stand Up And Shout Out,’ ‘Rattle Him’

[This growing phenomenon is often marked by violence and absurdity. Recently, right-wing demonstrators hung Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD) in effigy outside of his office. Missing from the reporting of these stories is the fact that much of these protests are coordinated by public relations firms and lobbyists who have a stake in opposing President Obama’s reforms.

The lobbyist-run groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which orchestrated the anti-Obama tea parties earlier this year, are now pursuing anaggressive strategy to create an image of mass public opposition to health care and clean energy reform. A leaked memo from Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer with the FreedomWorks website Tea Party Patriots, details how members should be infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress:

Tea Bagger Memo

– Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: “Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington.”

– Be Disruptive Early And Often: “You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.”

– Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: “The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”

The memo above also resembles the talking points being distributed by FreedomWorks for pushing an anti-health reform assault all summer. Patients United, a front group maintained by Americans for Prosperity, is currently busing people all over the country for more protests against Democratic members. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the NRCC, has endorsed the strategy, telling the Politico the days of civil town halls are now “over.”

Meanwhile, AHIP, the trade group and lobbying juggernaut representing the health insurance industry is sending staffers to monitor town halls and other right-wing front groups are stepping up their ad campaign to smear reform efforts. The strategy for defeating reform — recently outlined by an influential lobbyist to the Hill newspaper as “delay” then “kill” — is becoming apparent. By delaying a vote until after the August recess, lobbyists are now seizing upon recess town halls as opportunities to ambush lawmakers and fool them into believing there is wide opposition to reform.

UPDATE

Amy Menefee, communications director of Americans for Prosperity and its anti-health reform group Patients United, wrote to ThinkProgress regarding this post:

“Several blogs have picked up your post: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/31/recess-harassment-memo/ which mentions Americans for Prosperity’s efforts next to your mention of Bob MacGuffie’s memo about town hall meetings. Mr. MacGuffie’s memo was his own work. I would appreciate your help in correcting the erroneous rumor people have passed around that this memo came from AFP. We have encouraged our members to attend town halls, ask questions and register their opinions about issues including health care — as all citizens should do. We always promote civil dialogue and do not condone disruptive behavior.”

As noted in the post, MacGuffie is a volunteer who actively posts and volunteers with the website Tea Party Patriots. A review of the sponsoring organizations reveals that both FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity are sponsors of the website as “Freedom Coalition” partners.

A few months before joining Americans for Prosperity, Menefee herself worked for the medical device/pharmaceutical industry-funded “think-tank” called the Galen Institute.

BY LEE FANG ON JULY 31, 2009 AT 2:28 PM

This morning, Politico reported that Democratic members of Congress are increasingly being harassed by “angry, sign-carrying mobs and disruptive behavior” at local town halls. For example, in one incident, right-wing protesters surrounded Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY) and forced police officers to have to escort him to his car for safety

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This growing phenomenon is often marked by violence and absurdity. Recently, right-wing demonstrators hung Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD) in effigy outside of his office. Missing from the reporting of these stories is the fact that much of these protests are coordinated by public relations firms and lobbyists who have a stake in opposing President Obama’s reforms.

The lobbyist-run groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which orchestrated the anti-Obama tea parties earlier this year, are now pursuing anaggressive strategy to create an image of mass public opposition to health care and clean energy reform. A leaked memo from Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer with the FreedomWorks website Tea Party Patriots, details how members should be infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress:

– Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: “Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington.”

– Be Disruptive Early And Often: “You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.”

– Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: “The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”

The memo above also resembles the talking points being distributed by FreedomWorks for pushing an anti-health reform assault all summer. Patients United, a front group maintained by Americans for Prosperity, is currently busing people all over the country for more protests against Democratic members. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the NRCC, has endorsed the strategy, telling the Politico the days of civil town halls are now “over.”

Meanwhile, AHIP, the trade group and lobbying juggernaut representing the health insurance industry is sending staffers to monitor town halls and other right-wing front groups are stepping up their ad campaign to smear reform efforts. The strategy for defeating reform — recently outlined by an influential lobbyist to the Hill newspaper as “delay” then “kill” — is becoming apparent. By delaying a vote until after the August recess, lobbyists are now seizing upon recess town halls as opportunities to ambush lawmakers and fool them into believing there is wide opposition to reform.

UPDATE

Amy Menefee, communications director of Americans for Prosperity and its anti-health reform group Patients United, wrote to ThinkProgress regarding this post:

“Several blogs have picked up your post: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/31/recess-harassment-memo/ which mentions Americans for Prosperity’s efforts next to your mention of Bob MacGuffie’s memo about town hall meetings. Mr. MacGuffie’s memo was his own work. I would appreciate your help in correcting the erroneous rumor people have passed around that this memo came from AFP. We have encouraged our members to attend town halls, ask questions and register their opinions about issues including health care — as all citizens should do. We always promote civil dialogue and do not condone disruptive behavior.”

As noted in the post, MacGuffie is a volunteer who actively posts and volunteers with the website Tea Party Patriots. A review of the sponsoring organizations reveals that both FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity are sponsors of the website as “Freedom Coalition” partners.

A few months before joining Americans for Prosperity, Menefee herself worked for the medical device/pharmaceutical industry-funded “think-tank” called the Galen Institute.