[ExI] Astroturf - Is anything 'real' out there? (Richard Loosemore)

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 12:10 PM, Tom Nowell <nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Kelly asked if we could list any libertarian astroturfing.

Actually, I don't remember asking, but that's a minor issue. :-)

> Well, to match Mr Soros' left-wing activity I would like to propose the Koch brothers.

Super! We need all the competition we can get in the realm of ideas.
I'm glad to hear there are counter balances to Mr. Soros. I suspected
there would be.

> I google "koch brothers" - first article I get is the wiki article, with a prominent link to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Koch_family
>
> This states one brother funded and co-founded the Cato Institute, while the other was Libertarian VP candidate in 1980. OK, so the Libertarian party is variable on how "libertarian" its platform is, but they clearly self-identified as libertarians in the past.
>
> Next google result - a New Yorker article entitled "COVERT OPERATIONS: The billionaire
> brothers who are waging a war against Obama"

Sweet. Now you do understand that there is LEGITIMATE grass roots
opposition to Obama too, right? So where the astroturf ends and the
real grass begins is a hard thing to define.

> next result - a Guardian article "The Koch brothers: all the influence money can buy". This linked to
> http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/04/06/3936/kochs-web-influence?utm_source=publicintegrity&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=twitter
> Which shows how much corporate lobbying the Kochs do as opposed to how much is actually supporting libertarian causes.
>
> OK, so they may be rich hypocritical libertarians, but they're as fair targets as Mr Soros and his
> billionaire liberalism.

To be fair, I wasn't attacking Soros, per se. But rather Richard's
seemingly serious lack of awareness of Soro's activities. I am glad to
be more aware of what the Koch brothers are doing. Sounds pretty
interesting and just a little scary in the anti-environmental areas. I
have always been interested in how the strings of power are actually
pulled. Always heard it was back room cigar stuff, Bildebergs, Owls in
the woods, burning man, TED, the Federal Reserve, all that conspiracy
stuff. But who knows what is real and what is the deranged idea of
some berserk John Bircher coming out of cryonic stasis from the 70s? I
think it is always good to shine the light of day on how things
actually work.

In the future, and even now, it is getting harder and harder for these
power brokers to do their work in the dark. And I see that as a very
good thing. Yes, there will always be conspiracy theorists doing their
best (unintentionally) to discredit those who are tracking what's
actually real, but that shouldn't stop truth seekers who are trying to
uncover how things really work, no matter who killed JFK. :-)

-Kelly