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There's a direct line connecting the khaki-wearing "citizen" mob sent from Washington by the GOP to stop the 2000 recount in Florida, to the teabaggers dispatched by the corporate front group FreedomWorks to disrupt congressional town halls.
The leaked memo from Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer with the rightwing "grassroots" (wink wink) group FreedomWorks website Tea Party Patriots, details how members should be infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress:
Flashback: Comcast acknowledges that it hired people to take up room at an F.C.C. hearing into its practices.
Astroturfing - Comcast Blocking: First the Internet — Now the Public
# Contracted line-holders stand for hours to ensure their clients get seats
# Seats at hearings often only chance for lobbyists to get face time with legislators
# Line-standers, some homeless, are paid anywhere from $11 to $35 an hour
# Critics see practice as another way lobbyists are buying influence on Capitol Hill
CNN: Homeless stand in for lobbyists on Capitol Hill
What is "ASTROTURFING"?????
1. The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular movement, through means like letters to newspapers from soi-disant ‘concerned citizens’, paid opinion pieces, and the formation of grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded by a PR group (AstroTurf is fake grass; hence the term). See also sock puppet, tentacle.
2. What an individual posting to a public forum under an assumed name is said to be doing.
This term became common among hackers after it came to light in early 1998 that Microsoft had attempted to use such tactics to forestall the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust action against the company. The maneuver backfired horribly, angering a number of state attorneys-general enough to induce them to go public with plans to join the Federal suit. It also set anybody defending Microsoft on the net for the accusation “You're just astroturfing!”.
Astroturf refers to apparently grassroots-based citizen groups or coalitions that are primarily conceived, created and/or funded by corporations, industry trade associations, political interests or public relations firms. (SourceWatch)
Astroturfing is a word in English describing formal political, advertising, or public relations campaigns seeking to create the impression of being spontaneous "grassroots" behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf. (Wikipedia)
Above: Identified GOP astroturf operatives from the 2000 Bush/Gore election recount FAKE "grassroots" outrage "riots"...enabled by the FAKE "liberal media" coverage. Just like the present FAKE health care Town Hall astroturf rage.
ABC News: the 2000 Bush/Gore election recount "riots" were neither spontaneous nor local. It was an organized Republican Party protest, run by 75 party supporters out of a motor home headquarters in Miami.
Ten Horrible Examples Of Astroturfing
Kornacki: like Tea Parties, protests are lobbyists "manufacturing, with the help of conservative media outlets, outrage"
The FAKE "liberal media" again........
Update: Cable providers push back against anti-birther ad
