Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?

Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.

Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals.

---

See more posts by Choire Sicha

3 comments

That doesn't mean nobody took it seriously. A day before the event, The Heritage Foundation, a tax exempt, 501c(3) nonpartisan "educational institution" whose goal is "to formulate and promote conservative public policies," published five Twitter questions to "put President Obama on the spot."

These five questions, gift-wrapped by Ericka Anderson, Heritage Foundation's senior digital communications associate and former communications director for Congressman Todd Rokita, were fascinating. And boy, did they get asked.

Your budget was rejected by Senate 97-0 & Dems haven’t produced budget in 700+ days. Where is your economic plan? #AskObama

You said your stimulus plan would keep unemployment below 8%. Do you agree that was a trillion dollars wasted? #AskObama

You said it wasn’t a good idea to raise taxes in a recession but that is all you offer now to fix debt. Why? #AskObama

You’ve added more costly regulations in 2yrs than any of your predecessors, who all reviewed. When will it stop? #AskObama

Gas prices are high. We’re losing 90m barrels of oil due to your moratorium, plus jobs. Why release 30m from SPR? #AskObama

Heritage implored readers to "follow suit, or tweet these."

As expected, conservative organizations did just what The Heritage Foundation asked. Americans for Tax Reform and the 60 Plus Association, tweeted the texts verbatim. Don Irvine, chairman of "Accuracy in Media," tweeted not just one or two, but nearly all five of Heritage's set ups.

Demonstrating just how little difference there is between the two when it comes to thought leadership, tea party organizations such as the Philadelphia Tea Party and mainstream GOP orgs such as Kansas Republican Party and the Arizona Legislative District 20 Republican Party, all tweeted the Heritage tweets as their own.

This influence of Heritage followed through when it came to the elected officials who used the foundation's pre-written tweets are their own.

An establishment Republican who once called the Tea Party "disruptive," Texas Rep. Bill Flores, tweeted:

Meanwhile, Tea Party Caucus member and North Carolina Rep. Sue Myrick asked:

Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL):

Rep. Todd Rokita (R-IN):

Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN):

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ):

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC):

Jim Pfaff, Chief of Staff for Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS):

And then there was Utah Senator Orrin Hatch:

But maybe Hatch doesn't write his own tweets. Hatch's director of strategic communications, Jessica Fawson, tweeted from her personal account:

Fawson's resume lists her as a member of The Heritage Foundation.

Also doing what Heritage directed? Ed Morrissey, senior editor of one of the right's "leading news and commentary" blog Hot Air. Morrissey tweeted:

Hot Air's Associate Editor Tina Korbe joined in, not a surprise since she was once an "investigative journalist" for The Heritage Foundation. Before joining Hot Air, Morrissey also worked for the Heritage Foundation's Policy Blog. (It's noteworthy that Anderson, the author of the Heritage Twitter directions, used to blog for Town Hall, which acquired Hot Air in 2010.)

The extent to which elected politicians are taking direct talking points from The Heritage Foundation is hardly surprising given the Politico report from just a couple weeks ago that revealed the organization pays millions of dollars a year to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. In exchange, in some cases, these conservative captains of ideology read scripts from Heritage as if they were the host's own words.

Speaking for Senator Hatch, Jessica Fawson was less than eager to answer questions about the tweets a day later. After offering an explanation about how the senator often "retweets" things, Fawson replied to a direct comparison of the Senator's tweets to the Heritage ones with an official statement: "The American people are asking the same types of questions that Senator Hatch asked of the President. These are the issues that Senator Hatch is focusing on in the United States Senate and as Ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee."

This seems to imply that Senator Hatch believes The Heritage Foundation is the same as the voice of the American people, a question Fawson chose not to answer. "We already answered your first questions," she told us.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com. He's also on Twitter.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

30 comments

Philips closed by asking everyone if they were "willing to stand with Scott Walker."

Next to the testimony room, on the third floor of the the Minneapolis Hilton, the "Wisconsin Freedom Phones" call center operated for both days of the RightOnline conference on June 17 and 18. The script used in the for the calls consisted of only two questions. For just two questions, they said a lot.

RightOnline is a project of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and is dedicated to "advancing liberty and prosperity for all Americans through greater citizen participation online." Founded in 2008, RightOnline is a boot camp for training conservative activists in both Internet activism and ideology. Breakout sessions include Twitter 101, Advanced Twitter, Becoming an Effective Citizen Journalist, Protecting Yourself Online: Internet Security Issues for Activists, Legal Issues Related to Online Activism, Citizens Interacting with Congress Online, and Detecting & Countering Left-wing Media Bias (taught by ACORN-busting "pimp" videographer James O'Keefe).

The goal of the conference is, in part, to take ideological conservatives and teach them the online and social media skills they need to all become @patriotusa76, the still-mysterious Twitter user that brought down Congressman Weiner.

One training session—"Youth Outreach, Not all Students are Liberal"— taught a room of adults about how to create activists in high schools. One of its panelists was 15-year-old Tricia Willoughby; many Wisconsinites may remember Willoughby as the youth speaker at the Madison Tea Party rally who was so energetically defended by conservative blogger Ann Althouse.

So: the two questions. First, after identifying oneself as calling from Americans for Prosperity, the callers were instructed to ask: "Who do you plan to vote for in the upcoming election?"

Then, a second question: "Do you support or oppose Governor Walker's budget repair plan which reforms the way government workers collectively bargain?"

Herbert Kritzer, the political science professor and the Marvin J. Sonosky Chair of Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota, says the script is "not the kind of blunt instrument one sees in many push polls." He adds that it's "on the margin" and "reflects a particular perspective (use of the term 'reform' rather than 'limit')."

But a straight push poll may not have been the goal of AFP's RightOnline call center.

The AFP call center's "Frequently Asked Questions: Wisconsin Recall Elections in 2011" document, which was given to call center volunteers, included as one of the "talking points" directions for call center operators to answer the question "Who is the Republican? Who is the Democrat?" It instructed the volunteer RightOnline callers to "go ahead and inform them... but be careful not to show any support or opposition for either Party."

AFP is a 501(c)(3) organization, and as such, according to the IRS, is "absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office." Like most tea party organizations, it bills itself as non-partisan.

Instead, the way the calls and data fields were structured, it's more likely that what the call center was meaning to do was to confuse voters about the candidates in the upcoming recall elections.

One of the call center administrators allowed me to sit down and look at the program used. The drop down input for the first general question, about which candidate the voter would choose, included both the recalled Republican, the Democrat challenger and the "spoiler" Democrat placed to force a primary election. So, for example, those making calls to District 32 around La Crosse were told to inform voters that their choices in the upcoming election included (incumbent) Republican Dan Kapanke, Democrat Jennifer Shilling or Democrat James Smith. (James Smith is a former Republican official now running as a Democrat to force an unnecessary Democratic primary.)

Of the questions asking which candidate the voter would choose, nothing was noted to differentiate primaries from general elections. Volunteers made no distinction between the July primaries and the August general elections, yet at the same time read off the names off candidates from both parties.

Asked about Americans for Prosperity, a spokesman for Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board told us that it is GAB policy not to comment on any complaints it receives.

The call center was not the only Wisconsin recall-focused initiative at RightOnline. One session was titled "States in Fiscal Crisis: Reforming State Collective Bargaining."

A special session Friday afternoon titled "WI Brainstorming Session with State Director Matt Seaholm" featured the AFP Wisconsin head stressing to the audience that winning the recall elections was paramount, because if the Democrats win, "they will smell blood" and immediately go after Governor Walker. Seaholm said that if "the conservative majority remains intact" after the recalls, "it's going to be tough for them to take that lack of momentum and restart an effort to get 500,000 signatures."

(If anyone is smelling blood, it's Seaholm. That same day, The Progressive published a piece of disgusted barf in which its editor Matthew Rothschild wrote, "The mass protests that I expected this week at the capitol in Madison did not materialize. On Tuesday, there were maybe 5,000 people there. On Thursday, barely 1,000. I’m sorry, but that was pathetic.")

* * *

"As more and more protesters come in from Nevada, Chicago and elsewhere, I am not going to allow their voices to overwhelm the voices of the millions of taxpayers from across the state who think we’re doing the right thing."

Those words from Gov. Scott Walker, spoken in February, were just the beginning of a campaign to pin the protests and outrage over the budget bill on out-of-state influence. In the months since, Walker has continued to bang this gong. He went on Fox News to warn outside agitators to “stay out of the state’s business” and he has regularly used his Scott Walker Twitter account (not the Governor's account) to lambaste the out-of-state "union bosses" trying to influence the recall elections.

American for Prosperity was a huge supporter of Walker's campaign, as well as highly active during his original budget proposal. They ran a "Stand with Walker" campaign, and sent pro-Walker protesters to the Capitol for tea party counter rallies.

Later in the afternoon on Saturday, just before Tim Pawlenty took the stage to recite an anecdote about his family's trip to Wisconsin Dells, who was in the call center working the phones but the entire Willoughby family, including now-15-year-old Tricia.

At least she's from Wisconsin.

Abe Sauer's full report on RightOnline's Internet boot camp is at Esquire. He can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

8 comments

This time around, the Tea Party is taking action to draw attention to the fact that Barack Obama is gouging Americans by making sure gas prices are high by causing war in Libya, not opening Alaska to drilling and saving our national energy reserves to power Chinese tanks after China's inevitable invasion of the U.S. We spoke with Chris Lotto, Arizona activist and co-creator of the "The 'Hope and Change' Sticky Note Campaign," a movement that places anti-Obama sticky notes on gas pumps.

Yes, America, like a couple on the verge of divorce, can only communicate with Post-Its®.

Last Saturday afternoon, Lotto, who lives in Phoenix, launched the Facebook call to "Purchase a pad of large sticky notes. Write on each one, "How's that Hope & Change working out for you?" Every time you stop to fill your vehicle with gas, place your sticky note somewhere on the pump before you drive away. DO NOT be destructive in ANY way! Place your sticky note somewhere, so as not to impede the next customer's ability to read the pump's digital readout."

By the end of this week, the page had over 8,000 fans who had sent out over 50,000 invites to join and dozens of pictures were rolling in of notes placed on gas pumps from Ohio to Wisconsin to Texas.

Of the pre-printed sticky notes that are beginning to appear, Lotto said, "I would prefer they hand write each one, as I want more the appearance of a down home, grassroots movement."

Lotto said he "created the Facebook page entirely on my own." But since his accounting firm "does not permit employees to use work computers to log onto Facebook" he "asked several other 'active' members of my page if they would allow me to make them co-administrators of the page, so they could monitor for any uncivil-like posts." Those administrators all have varying levels of Tea Party involvement, such as Diana Gonzalez Horton, who is a member of Ohio's 9-12 movement. (Lotto says he is "not a Tea Party member, although my beliefs fall in line with the Tea Party's beliefs.")

One administrator is Greg Hedgepath, associate of YourDaddy.net, a site that's having what we'll call "a little trouble" getting past the release of Obama's long form birth certificate. Greg himself is no reporting slouch, having broken wide open such scandals as "Ex-CIA Agent Reveals: 'Muslim Brotherhood' has infiltrated Obama Administration" and how "a network of Mexican-American women, known as BMWs (Big Mexican Women), have been assisting Afghanis in illegally traversing the United States." Greg is the lucky proprietor of the Facebook handle /stopobama.

"I was actually working in parallel with them and did not know they had the Facebook page created at the time of my first post," he told us. "By the time I was finished with my second post my wife had found the Facebook page. Chris was gracious to add me as a creator/admin since all I have done is promote this all week long."

His site has "had over 20,000 visits to the three pages I have put together since the 4th," he said. Plus he promised a new video later today at his YouTube channel.

"That's about it as far as my input into this campaign," he said. "I guess you could say I did start it but was not the only one doing so"—something he addressed on his site.

Almost all are fans of Feedomworks, Fox News and are very, very "pro-Israel." Lotto himself is a member of nearly every "defend Israel" Facebook group out there, including the "Mossad" one and "I am a Jew and I will NOT vote for Obama in 2012" as well as the groups "Shame on Gov. Jan Brewer for Vetoing Arizona House bill 2177 Birther Bill" and "R.I.P. Banned FB accounts that spoke out against Islam."

But this is about gas.

The campaign calls for an expansion beyond gas stations, and some stickers have already turned up in grocery stores, denoting Obama's complicity in the price increase of some basic American food staples, like Cinnamon Burst Cheerios.

As with all popular things, the "Hope and Change" campaign has inspired knock-offs like the "NObama Gas Pump Campaign" and the "Sticky Note Campaign."

It has also inspired a "union threat" of a counter-campaign in which pro-union thugs in Wisconsin will put stickers on brands that supported Governor Scott Walker's campaign. Fox 6 News from Green Bay (which we last read about when its cameraman at the state capitol was mocking protesting students for their ignorance), noted that "Grocery stores will call police on anyone they catch planting stickers." As a commenter on the story notes, "This is getting crazy. I hope some union thug gets his lights punched out for tampering with peoples food."

Lotto says that the movement is not grassroots, it's "gas-roots." It's an appeal to humor that the Tea Party is using more, the kind for which is has always relentlessly skewered the left. Just look at this bit of genius promoting Obama as President of Brazil.

The sticking-political-messages-on-other-people's-commodities tactic shows no sign of abating. It's a long way to 2012, and the GOP proper has completely lost control of its constituency, so everyone should prepare for what's probably going to be the most ugly election in recent history, and, with every free surface in the nation plastered with neon squares, I mean literally ugly.

And in the end, the only winner will be, as always, Big Post-It®.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abe sauer at gmail dot com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

96 comments

As the marquee battle over unions and Walker's bill is happening in Madison, the true fight over changes to the state is happening elsewhere. The ransacking of Wisconsin cannot be done from Madison alone. Governor Scott Walker has furnished the tools, but who will wield them? We've sketched a blueprint of how state Republicans lied to their constituents and conspired with D.C.-based wealth-funded conservative think tanks to not only assemble the "tools" needed to dismantle progressive and middle class power in Wisconsin but also how those organizations trained "mechanics" to use those tools to get "free market conservatives" elected to local offices like city councils and school boards—so that then they can begin to dismantle them.

It all starts in Sauk county.

Walker's budget targets education for the biggest cuts. The bill takes $900 million from K-12 education (about 9 percent of the budget). A property tax cap prevents districts from making up the money. The bill also cuts hundreds of millions from higher education, targeting everything from the University of Wisconsin system to technical education. It is the most drastic cut to education in Wisconsin history.

And those who support Walker's bill have noted that the state elected Republicans in 2010—so the current bill should have been expected and everyone should stop whining.

Sauk county, northwest of Madison, is a microcosm of the state as a whole. Farmers, progressives and social conservatives all mingle. While Dane county went for the Democrats in the 2010 governor's race by more than 20 points, Walker won Sauk by single digits. (As well, Senator Russ Feingold won, also by single digits.)

While it's true that the state elected a Republican majority, candidates were specifically asked about union concessions during their campaigns.

"He lied to us," said teacher Jenny Fish, as she shivered in the 20-degree chill with 100 other protesters outside Reedsburg's Voyageur Inn. Inside was the Sauk County Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner, held after its morning annual caucus and afternoon celebration of Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday. ("Holding the line against Madison.") Fish was in charge of vetting Representative Ed Brooks (R-50) last year for Three Rivers United Educators. His answers were in part what led the union to endorse him, a Republican, for election.

Three Rivers United Educators not only endorsed Brooks, it make a donation to his campaign. Brooks also took money from the Southwest Education Association and the Wisconsin Education Association Council, which is the state's largest teachers union.

Only 3 of the 25 Wisconsin candidates that WEAC endorsed in the 2010 election were Republicans: Richard Spanbauer (R-53), Ed Brooks (R-50) and Dale Schultz, the Sauk county Senator who has been rumored to be breaking with his party. All three won.

Fish said that she asked Brooks if he supported removing collective bargaining for benefits. He said he did not. That answer directly led to his endorsement by the labor union.

Stephanie Hasler, a French teacher at Reedsburg High School, told me that she and a number of Reedsburg teachers visited Brooks in his office on February 18th of this year. At that meeting, Brooks admitted to not having read the budget bill—and he also insisted that the collective bargaining provisions were not in it.

After the bill was unveiled, including the union-busting provisions, Fish said she contacted Brooks. "He basically said he was helpless and could't risk breaking with his party," she said. "He told us, 'Why should I vote no for a bill that's just going to pass anyway?'"

On March 7th, Brooks sent out an email to constituents, defending himself by pointing out "my daughter is a teacher" and claiming that he actually made changes to the bill during a Joint Committee on Finance executive session, including inserting the language that "just cause is still required for termination." Brooks said that changes like this made him "able to vote for Governor Walker's budget repair bill." His email threw some salt on the wound for good measure. He added: "And please note that unions still exist."

(Over two days, I reached out, numerous times, to Rep. Brooks for comment. His office repeatedly said he would call back. He never did.)

This double-cross is what compelled Reedsburg residents to protest for three consecutive days over the weekend.

Stephanie Hasler told me that an impromptu demonstration sprang up on Main Street after negotiations with the Reedsburg school board crumbled. Counting on the new bill measures, the board refused the teachers' offer of a pay freeze and agreement to the Board's offer on retirement insurance from the previous contract negotiations, as well as paying the percentages of insurance and pension that the governor wants. Fearing what the Walker bill would allow the board to do, Hasler, along with a dozen other teachers in the district, chose an unplanned early retirement earlier in the week, so as to save their insurance benefits under the existing contract.

Reedsburg is a town of fewer than 10,000 people. And with all due respect to the thousands gathered in Madison, openly protesting in a small town, where everyone knows everyone, takes incredible guts. Generally, small-town Wisconsinites are much more comfortable grumbling under their breath about things until they die.

The Voyageur, a wonderful relic from the 1960s, is best known for its collection of hundreds of Normal Rockwell magazine covers, ads and portraits. Attendees of the Republican dinner walked by four of Rockwell's 1940s covers for The Grade Teacher, the "Professional Magazine for Classroom Teachers of all Grades." The special guest was U.S. Senator Ron Johnson.

In the Voyageur parking lot, Brooks' arrival was met by a chant of "Recall! Recall! Recall!."

Not in attendance: Dale Schultz, the moderate Republican Senator for Reedsburg who has still not confirmed how he will vote on the bill. As far as Wisconsin can tell, he has become a ghost.

* * *

Joe Hasler, Stephanie's husband, a longtime state Republican, told me he is "appalled by the party's recent hard turn to the right." Joe isn't just your everyday Republican. Joe was Tommy Thompson's campaign treasurer—Thompson, who was praised and evoked in Walker's budget address.

One of the reasons moderate Wisconsin Republicans have seen the party slide from their grasp is a massive influx of out-of-state money from groups such as the Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity and the Sam Adams Alliance.

Sauk county contains a perfect example of exactly how the corporate takeover on the state level will be implemented on the local level.

Walker's fundamental change to the education system in Wisconsin via funding cuts, tax caps and charter promotion is not that damaging without local level implementation. As Walker has said, his bill is a "tool." Tools need mechanics.

So, in Reedsburg, city officials have floated a solution. They want to move the town's fire protection charge from tax rolls to utility bills. That frees up around $200,000. For Walker's plans to be truly effective, there must be those at the local level, like in Reedsburg, who are willing to look people they've known all their life in the eyes... and fire them.

Enter the American Majority.

On Saturday, at about the exact moment Michael Moore was addressing 40,000 people at the Capitol (and comparing events in Madison to those in Egypt), about four-and-a-half miles away at the Vitense driving range and minigolf course, the American Majority was holding a sold-out day-long training event. The event, in partnership with the Sauk County Tea Party, consisted of lessons like "Implementing Freedom" which teaches "how to plan a campaign, fine tune your communication skills, and fundraise." The event provided "an opportunity to meet other patriots in your community, the seminar provides an opportunity to network and learn from grassroots organizers with successful campaign experience."

Now, is that "community organizing?" Because it uses the both those words and sure as hell sounds like community organizing.

American Majority brags that it trained 27 city council candidates in Oklahoma and saw 17 of them win. More importantly, the group claims that all but one of those 17 had never run for office before.

In an interview with WisPolitics, a co-founder of the Virginia-based organization, Drew Ryun said, "The letter behind that candidates’ name to some extent does not matter… What matters is are these folks at any level of government that are advancing free market conservative principals."

(A note: When some political organization or think tank is identified in the press as "Virginia-based," that means it's in "Washington D.C.")

But despite that claim, American Majority does not actually support Democrats. Currently the organization's website features a large "Stand with Walker" banner, coincidentally the same motto used by the heavily funded ad campaign from Koch's Americans for Prosperity.

American Majority does partner with such "nonpartisan" groups as Franklin Center's new venture "Wisconsin Reporter," which is a PR interest disguised as journalism to seed information—such as the recent poll that claimed 71% of Wisconsinites favor Walker's budget changes. (See, it's got "reporter" right there in the name.) The Franklin Center, in turn, is associated with groups such as the Sam Adams Alliance—an outfit that I ran into on Capitol Square a week ago. One of their "grassroots" surveyors was soliciting people in Starbucks for 20 minutes of their time, for which they would be paid $10.

Not clear enough? Scott Walker refers to his budget bill as a "tool." American Majority refers to its local activists as "mechanics."

American Majority was founded by Ned and Drew Ryun, sons of longtime Kansas Republican Representative Jim Ryun. (Yes, Kansas, home of the Kochs.) Jim Ryun's federal campaign finance report reads like a list of tens of thousands of dollars from the Kochs, going all the way back to 1997.

American Majority was organized by, and receives a great deal of its funding through, the Chicago-based Sam Adams Alliance, which carefully protects the list of its patrons and has gone to pains (though not effectively enough) to remove evidence that it is in large part funded by the Kochs. American Majority is also partnered with Koch organizations that don't hide the Koch connection at all, like Americans for Prosperity.

Sam Adams Alliance is very much funded by the Kochs—but even if they were not, Eric O'Keefe, the chairman and CEO of the Sam Adams Alliance, is also a board member at the Institute for Humane Studies, a group which has received millions from the Kochs and for which Charles Koch is the chairman. O'Keefe is also a board member at the Wisconsin Club for Growth, a state office of the organization funded by the wealthiest of Americans. The Club has become one of the most influential organizations in Wisconsin politics. (The CFG supported Ron Johnson over Russ Feingold and its to-date $320,000 in spending for the 2011 campaign of conservative State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser accounts for about 70 percent of total TV ad expenditures in that election).

And Eric O'Keefe lives in Spring Green, Sauk County.

* * *

American Majority chose the term "mechanics" because this was the name of the first intelligence network put together by independence-minded colonists. The group, whose most famous member was Paul Revere, gathered information on the British and conducted minor sabotage. Explaining the name, American Majority's pull quote begins "In the days before the Revolutionary War, Paul Revere organized the Mechanics, a group of determined patriots that grew out of the Sons of Liberty." The unattributed copy is lifted from Revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com.

As the CIA history of the period's intelligence notes of the "mechanics": "Their security practices, however, were amateurish. They met in the same place regularly (the Green Dragon Tavern), and one of their leaders (Dr. Benjamin Church) was a British agent."

The questionnaire that American Majority uses to identify those who will, according to co-founder Ned Ryun, "organize their communities, hard-wire their precincts, learn how to become effective online, and to understand the system that we are confronting," gives a hint of what the group is trying to weed out. The questionnaire, below:

American Majority Mechanics Eligibility Questionnaire
1. What do you believe the role of government should be in America?


2. Do you have any experience with public speaking and presenting?


3. How do you feel about the “Birther” issue?


4. Please list any and all current organizations you are presently associated
with.

5. What do you hope to get out of becoming an authorized American Majority Mechanic?

6. What terms do you best believe describe our government and leadership
today?


7. How well do you know the Constitution and Declaration of Independence?


8. What do you believe are the most important political issues this country is facing right now?


9. Who is your political hero and why?


10. Please list all websites, social networks, and blogs in which you have a presence.

11. How comfortable are you with public speaking and presenting on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being very comfortable)?

12. How comfortable are you with technology on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being very comfortable)?

13. How comfortable are you with social networks, including Facbook, Twitter, and YouTube on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being very comfortable)?

14. Please list at least two professional references and their contact information so that we can talk with your peers.

The mechanics program is a bit like a franchise. American Majority "mechanics will receive 75% of the net from their trainings" and the 2010 program required mechanics to perform at least one training per month, for a minimum of 30 trainees through the end of 2010. At $20 per person, that's a minimum take for the mechanic of $450 per month. I attempted to attend the $20 per head training in Madison on March 5th but it was booked solid.

The mechanics program was put together and began recruiting in February, 2010. Formal training took place March 24th to 26th, with American Majority flying recruits to Washington D.C., covering all travel and board. And then the Sauk County Tea Party was founded on June 17, 2010.

Later in 2010, the Sauk County Tea Party began linking to and endorsing strategy meetings with American Majority. In mid-December of 2010, the group took part in a strategy call with co-founder Ned Ryun to discuss the New Leaders Project.

On December 29th, Sauk Tea Party President John Meegan announced his candidacy for Baraboo school board.

Meegan's ties to O'Keefe's American Majority go beyond the training seminars. Just a few weeks ago, Meegan organized area counter-protesters to go to Madison, in the process telling the Baraboo News Republic that he was "working with a national group called American Majority." The News Republic piece interviewed another counter-protester, Lori Mislivecek, noting she was a "Baraboo resident." What it did not note was that she is also listed as one of 37 members of the Sauk County Tea Party. In anticipation of the trip to Madison, Meegan sent an email insisting "all signage should be supportive of the budget reform bill, Gov. Walker, conservative legislators, freedom, liberty, rule of law, etc. No partisan or violent signage allowed."

Fight Back Wisconsin counts the Sauk County Tea Party as part of its "Prosperity Network." Fight Back Wisconsin and Kochs' Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin's share an address on South 70th Street in Milwaukee.

Asked about financial support for from the Wisconsin office of Americans For Prosperity to "grassroots" tea party groups within its coalition, such as the Sauk County Tea Party, or its ties to American Majority, Matt Seaholm, director of AFP-Wisc., told me there is no such official support "beyond a shared interest."

Except, just after the 2010 election, Americans for Prosperity- Wisconsin announced that the "Wisconsin Prosperity Network" had "helped privatize the Center Right political processes with the development and financial support of Prosperity 101, First Freedom Foundation, The MacIver Institute, American Majority, and Americans for Prosperity."

One more interesting detail about Meegan's school board candidacy is that his one child, a teenage daughter, does not even attend school in Baraboo. His daughter attends IQ Academy, "a complete online middle and high school" based in Waukesha, over 100 miles away, near Milwaukee. IQ Academy benefits from Wisconsin's unique open enrollment policies which redistribute vouchers from the school system (for which parents pay taxes). As advertised on IQ Academy's website, for Wisconsin residents the school is "tuition-free."

An open letter that Meegan wrote to the Baraboo School Board in Jan. 2011, well after working with American Majority and just before Walker's budget introduction, outlines demands curiously similar to what Walker finally addressed, including "removal of all open enrollment limits related to virtual charter schools."

In the February primary, Meegan received more votes than any other candidate. Next up, the April 4 general election.

* * *

So, to review: In 2010, the Club for Growth and the Koch Brothers heavily supported the election of Scott Walker. Union-busting legislation is written for Walker to submit in 2011. Meanwhile, Club for Growth and Koch Brothers trustee Eric O'Keefe's Sam Adams Alliance launches the American Majority New Leaders Project, which, in 2010, partners with the Sauk County Tea Party, to train free market conservatives to run for office. Those candidates include Sauk County Tea Party co-founder John Meegan, who announces in December, 2010 that he is running for a seat on the Baraboo school board.

It's almost a given that the John Meegan-Eric O'Keefe example is but one simple detailed example of something that is no doubt going on in all contested counties across the state… and more. Scheduled American Majority training events in the near future include Waxahachie, TX, Crowley, LA, Outer Banks, NC and Bowling Green, KY.

(Messages requesting comment from Eric O'Keefe, John Meegan and the American Majority were not returned.)

The new conservatives love to use the home budget metaphor when debating government spending. They argue that the government should have to watch its spending just like ordinary folk. Tea Party Review Magazine just published an argument from National Taxpayers Union's Jordan Forbes: "Families balance their budgets' Politicians must do the same." In it, Forbes asks: "Why can’t Congress make a budget and stick to it? That’s something that most families across this country do all the time, year in and year out. It’s not easy, especially in hard times...."

Why does this favored metaphor disintegrate when it comes to targeting cuts to balance that budget? When "most families across this country" are faced with making spending cuts, the one cut they make last of all is to their children's future. But that's exactly what Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans are doing. In an attempt to balance the family budget, the governor is looking first at what he can cut from the children's schooling, so that he can keep the premium cable channels.

Correction: This piece originally noted that the "New Leaders Project trained 27 city council candidates in Oklahoma and saw 17 of them win." AM launched the "New Leaders Project" at the end of 2010 for the 2011/2012 election cycle. Those successes in OK were achieved through an unnamed program.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

26 comments

Every day, McKenna's program calls her "a voice of reason in a city of chaos." Madison. Madison, Wisconsin! "A city of chaos." She's one of the star conservative voices in the region. Michelle Malkin endorses her as "The only voice we have in Madison."

The recent protests against Governor Scott Walker's proposal to bust up the pubic service unions has McKenna in a frenzy. Just before tweeting "FIRE THEM ALL" as a response to the teachers who have called in sick to protest, McKenna posted this little bit of news on her Facebook page: "LIBERALS CALLING TO ASSASSINATE SCOTT WALKER?!!"

The totality of McKenna's post reads "Posting on facebook today: OK, If you knew what a royal pain Walker was going to be...Would you have arrange a nice slow convertible ride for him while he was in Dallas? Is there a book depository in Madison?" [sic, all of it] No source is given.

Many of her Facebook followers immediately responded to the note. Jerry Smythe wrote, "This is sad but not unexpected. All too typical of the tactics of the left. Conservatives must always treat them with respect. They treat their political enemies any way they want with seeming impunity."

McKenna is suggesting that somebody posted the following Kennedy assassination comparison comment on Facebook. And that is true that somebody did post that on Facebook earlier. That person was Vicki McKenna. Thirteen hours earlier, as a comment on one of her own earlier posts about the protests, McKenna wrote: "this is nice, just got this sent to me: 'OK, If you knew what a royal pain Walker was going to be... Would you have arrange a nice slow convertible ride for him while he was in Dallas? Is there a book depository in Madison?'"

Conservative talk show host posts unsourced claim about assassinating Governor Walker in a comment thread on her own Facebook page. Half a day later, she finds the comment and is so outraged that she puts together a Facebook post about how liberal Facebookers are calling for the assassinating of Governor Walker. PRESTO! NEWS!

Even better, later on in her own post, McKenna follows up with a highly ironic question: "can you all imagine if i had put something like that up on a FB post?!!! my god, the headlines would be screaming: RIGHT WING RADIO HOST CALLS FOR LIBERAL ASSASSINATIONS! police would be alerted. i'd probably be arrested."

McKenna found her discovery so important that she tweeted a link to the page as well.

After several tries, we finally reached McKenna. She responded to our questions about the source, writing only that "it was a post from a friend" and that "no, i don;t have a link." McKenna added: "as a former reporter, i am interested to know how you conceive this as a news story, though?"

Meanwhile, right now, thousands more students and protestors are marching up State Street—quite peacefully.

McKenna's slanderous assassination accusation comes amidst rumors that Walker's GOP backing is beginning to have second thoughts about the bill. Not Walker, who, in the face of even bigger protests today, spoke to Fox News, reiterated that the National Guard was ready, dismissed the protests as "just a few riled up" people—and more or less told all of his opposition to get stuffed.

Republicans are already setting sights on their next victim, with plans to dismantle the state's regional transit authorities, essentially drawing the knife across the neck of improved mass transit.

McKenna's inflamed rhetoric is beyond the pale even for her and is emblematic of the mindset behind the bill's supporters. (Others on McKenna's side have attempted to turn workers against one another with claims that the "City of Madison protects its unions, not its taxpayers," as if union members did not pay taxes.)

McKenna's suggestion is made even more pathetic and vile by the fact that by every single report from the protests has shown them to be absolutely peaceful.

Blah blah blah McKenna ashamed blah blah blah should be blah blah blah don't hold your breath.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer [at] gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

43 comments

---

See more posts by Choire Sicha

12 comments

---

See more posts by Choire Sicha

9 comments

---

See more posts by Choire Sicha

31 comments

The moment Olson's story broke, the DiggPatriots Yahoo! group was deleted. However, Mr. Olson claims to have months and months' worth of archives of the DiggPatriots message board, which promise hours of ghastly entertainment when they are posted.

Here is a sample from the DiggPatriots message board, as reported by Olson:

"The more liberal stories that were buried the better chance conservative stories have to get to the front page. I'll continue to bury their submissions until they change their ways and become conservatives."
-phoenixtx (aka vrayz)

I am sorry but how many kinds of dumb can you pack into one statement, by golly? If there were the slightest chance of persuading liberals to "change their ways and become conservatives"-I know, it's happened now and again-the example hereby set isn't going to help any. Also: how can you be shouting about "democracy" all the time, and then go around actively manipulating the crowd? And calling it patriotism? And how... gah whatever, they are so dumb.)

I've got two questions about this incident. First, if the DiggPatriots succeeded in gaming the rankings for a whole year undetected, we can assume that all sorts of other groups are doing so too, still undetected, right? And secondly: if Digg and other social media sites are indeed being gamed by various groups, what effect does this have, exactly?

None of this would be such a big deal, except for two things.

One is that Digg's audience is so super-giantly large. According to the Guardian Digg had 7.6 million unique visitors in June alone this year. Given that thirteen of the top fifty spots on Alexa are held by Google, because they break out each nation's Google site on its own, Digg is well within the top hundred of the world's websites. A place on Digg's front page guarantees thousands upon thousands of readers for the lucky author of a popular piece.

The other big-deal thing is that a space on the the Digg front page confers a certain crowdsourced stamp of approval: the front page results appear to have been generated by non-colluding individuals with diverse aims and information, like a wonderful snapshot of the hive mind.

James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds is instructive here. Social media sites like Digg rely tangentially on the "wisdom of crowds" principle; if a lot of different people find something engaging or interesting, there's a reasonable chance you will, too. This is a little bit like the jellybean-counting phenomenon, or like Rotten Tomatoes movie ratings.

There's a fractal aspect of social networking sites that adds a huge wrinkle, though, as Surowiecki describes. Once we believe that a lot of disparate individuals hold some opinion, by reading a poll or a review, or noting a high Digg ranking, that colors our perception of the facts, and thereby alters our opinions. For example, if you show the jellybean-estimator everyone else's guesses before he makes his own, the "wisdom" disappears. Or you can game the jellybean results, say by concealing a hollow globe amongst the jellybeans (which is kind of what the DiggPatriots were doing,) or by putting a label on the jellybean jar that says "1000 jellybeans." It's very easy to skew the results of such experiments.

The real wisdom of crowds works only in certain circumstances, as Surowiecki notes:

Under what circumstances is the crowd smarter?

There are four key qualities that make a crowd smart. It needs to be diverse, so that people are bringing different pieces of information to the table. It needs to be decentralized, so that no one at the top is dictating the crowd's answer. It needs a way of summarizing people's opinions into one collective verdict. And the people in the crowd need to be independent, so that they pay attention mostly to their own information, and not worrying about what everyone around them thinks.

And what circumstances can lead the crowd to make less-than-stellar decisions?

Essentially, any time most of the people in a group are biased in the same direction, it's probably not going to make good decisions. So when diverse opinions are either frozen out or squelched when they're voiced, groups tend to be dumb. And when people start paying too much attention to what others in the group think, that usually spells disaster, too. For instance, that's how we get stock-market bubbles, which are a classic example of group stupidity: instead of worrying about how much a company is really worth, investors start worrying about how much other people will think the company is worth. The paradox of the wisdom of crowds is that the best group decisions come from lots of independent individual decisions.

So many arguments come down to "most people believe ..." and "the will of the people," even in countries governed by autocrats; hence the importance of polls and the attention they are always given. Hence the tacit, almost subconscious trust we put in sites like Digg.

The DiggPatriots story demonstrates that, because it benefits certain individuals to collude in order to game the results, the impression of crowdsourced authenticity on Digg is false. But how false, really, we can't know. But efforts like these might partly explain why many of us are forever wondering, who ARE all these climate-change deniers, these Tea Partiers, these fans of Sarah Palin? Maybe there really aren't so many of them as all that.

It seems clear that finding hidden disinformation is of the utmost importance; but even if we can't eliminate disinformation entirely, we should at least know that there's a chance it's already there. Consequently, it's worth trying to understand the nature and purposes of such collusion as we know to have occurred.

It was a mistake though for Mr. Olson to use the word "censorship" to describe the activities of the Digg Patriots. Censorship suggests an abuse of power, but the DiggPatriots haven't got any power. What they've got is the will to be dishonest. It's not censorship; it's nowhere near that dignified. It's plain cheating, sinc ethere are rules.

The activities of the Digg Patriots far more closely resemble these things:

Publishing photos of a huge crowd at your rally, only they weren't taken at your rally and you know it.

Sending salaried party operatives to pretend to be concerned residents of Florida and stage a riot.

Publishing photographs of calm lovely Istanbul that you claim to have taken yourself in Baghdad.

Heavily doctoring a video by adding in unrelated footage of yourself dressed as a cartoon pimp in order to discredit an organization dedicated to helping the poor.

Editing a video in which a black woman speaks in favor of racial harmony and understanding to make it look as if she's saying the opposite.

All of which are cheating things that right-wing activists have done in a fraudulent attempt to make their numbers look bigger, their adherents more committed, their opponents less trustworthy, and their policy positions more popular, wise and/or secure.

Lest it be supposed that I favor the left: I do. One of the main reasons for that is that there are far fewer such incidents to report from the contemporary left. I regret that it has to be said, and I wish more on the right were smart and principled like David Gergen and Dwight D. Eisenhower and Colin Powell. I do not believe that any of those guys would cheat, and I would love it if there more like them. Note to Republicans: if you can run some guys who are as smart and principled as David Gergen, I, a liberal, might even vote for them.

However, there is a trend on the American right of behaving in a manner that indicates they believe it is better to cheat than lose. That's not so surprising, really. Among people who think that Ayn Rand is a visionary, and even a novelist, it is not just okay but practically obligatory to believe that anything goes. The ends justify the means. You just grab! Greed is good! Until they change their ways and actively state that they have given up cheating because it is contemptible and wrong, then, we can assume we will be seeing more of the same (to clarify, I don't demand that the DiggPatriots become liberals, only that they stop cheating.)

The "popular news" Digg is showing us is already polluted by nonindependent judgment, presumably of many different kinds; in response to last week's revelations, new suspicions are already being aired, like this post about the possible burying of Linux-related stories. There's lesser gaming left and right-lots of websites hire "Digg consultants." You can hire Digg Front for a month to get your story on the front page for $495-and if they don't get you there, they'll do it again next month for free.

You could say all this is like the stock market, which has already been gamed all to hell with all sorts of insider trading and self-serving shenanigans before you ever get near it. Maybe you still want to have a flutter, and see what's doing in such places. But you should do so in the full, clear knowledge that the information we get is liable to be tainted in all manner of ways.

Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: The Macho of the Dork and Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman.

Photo from Flickr by Paul McGuire.

---

See more posts by Maria Bustillos

17 comments