Only 29 shopping days to the next Tea Party!

[bos1]

Will your local Tea Party be officially registered with the American Family Association in their fight against the "homosexual agenda"? Or just organized by corporate lobbyist PR firms staffed by major Republicans? In either case they will be promoted by Republican organ FOX News, of course.

The astroturfing (fake grassroots) of the Tea Parties came through the corporate lobbyist groups FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity with some major support by Christian extremist group America Family Association. From Sourcewatch.org:

According to its website in February, 2009, "FreedomWorks is now working with other groups to plan a massive, nationwide tea party protest day for Tax Day on April 15th, 2009" <4>, the Tax Day Tea Party protests...In 2008, FreedomWorks was behind the creation of a fake grassroots web site called Angryrenter.com which rallies opposition to "the Obama Housing Bailout." The site urges people to oppose bailing out mortgage companies. The site claims to represent "Renters and responsible homeowners against a government mortgage bailout."

Freedom Works' boss is former Texas Republican Representative Dick Armey. During its Tea Party organizing, FreedomWorks was found to have set up numerous websites Tea Party websites that all looked independent but were in fact made by Freedom Works.

From the piece in The Atlantic
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/04/the_tea_party_movement_whos_in_charge.php
we get more

They are: FreedomWorks, the conservative action group led by Dick Armey; dontGO, a tech savvy free-market action group that sprung out of last August's oil-drilling debate in the House of Representatives; and Americans for Prosperity, an issue advocacy/activist group based on free market principles. Conservative bloggers, talk show hosts, and other media figures have attached themselves to the movement in peripheral capacities. Armey will appear at a major rally in Atlanta, FreedomWorks said.

Americans for Prosperity's boss is Tim Phillips, a former partner of right-wing Christian activist Ralph Reed in the lobbying firm Century Strategies. Americans for Prosperity has done a lot of “grassroots” events for Big Oil and according to Phillips own bio:

During the 2000 GOP primaries, Tim helped spearhead Century's national efforts on behalf of George Walker Bush's campaign for president. Beginning in 1999 and continuing through the nomination, Century provided direct mail, telemarketing, coalition building and strategic services to Bush for President.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Timothy_R._Phillips

A forthright appraisal here
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/09/lobbyists-planning-teaparties/

– Freedom Works staffers coordinate conference calls among protesters, contacting conservative activists to give them “sign ideas, sample press releases, and a map of events around the country.”

– Freedom Works staffers apparently moved to “take over” the planning of local events in Florida.

– Freedom Works provides how-to guides for delivering a “clear message” to the public and media.

– Freedom Works has several domain addresses — some of them made to look like they were set up by amateurs — to promote the protests.

– Americans for Prosperity is writing press releases and planning the events in New Jersey, Arizona, New Hampshire, Missouri, Kansas, and several other states.

This type of corporate ‘astroturfing‘ is nothing new to either organization. While working to promote Social Security privatization, Freedom Works was caught planting one of its operatives as a “single mom” to ask questions to President Bush in a town hall on the subject. Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed Freedom Works for similarly building “amateur-looking” websites to promote the lobbying interests of Dick Armey, the former Republican Majority Leader who now leads Freedom Works and is a lobbyist for the firm DLA Piper.

Not to mention the fringe of Donald Wildmon and his American Family Association, obsessed with fighting "the homosexual agenda", who have been heavily pushing the Tea Party past and future:

The AFA sponsored TEA Party Day rallies were a smashing success! Hundreds of thousands attended approximately 3,000 rallies. Your AFA sponsored over 2,000 rallies. But the mainstream media and the "tax and spend" members of Congress still don't get it. So get ready for the American Freedom Day TEA Party rallies on July 4. Our goal is to double the number of cities in which AFA sponsors rallies.

http://faq.afa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=331&Itemid=35

More on AFA, which also has problems with the PTA!

"But the National PTA continued right along, increasingly becoming a tool to promote a left-wing philosophy instead of helping the children with their educational needs. The latest project for the National PTA is the promotion of the homosexual agenda…Stop the PTA from using your children to promote their left-wing political agenda. "— Don Wildmon, AFA Journal, February 2001
...
California director for AFA was Scott Lively of Abiding Truth Ministries and the Pro-Family Law Center. Lively is a long-time anti-gay activist who has written such books as The Pink Swastika which claims that "homosexuals the true inventors of Nazism and the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities." Lively has also written 7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child and The Poisoned Stream: "Gay" Influence in Human History. Under his leadership, AFA California launched the "California Campaign to Take Back the Schools" to stop the "homosexualization of American public schools."

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/american-family-association

So, in addition to the FOX News promotion, organizers of the Tea Parties include well-funded, highly staffed PR firms representing such things as Big Oil and privatization of Social Security, headed by major Republicans, as well as large Christian extremist organizations. How's that for grassroots?

[babylonsister]

1. Didn't you just post this? nt