[ExI] Astroturf - Is anything 'real' out there?

[Dan Ust]

Since you mentioned the New Yorker article, have you read Jeff Riggenbach's response to it? It's at:

http://mises.org/daily/4717

Regards,

Dan

On Aug 6, 2011, at 14:10, Tom Nowell <nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Kelly asked if we could list any libertarian astroturfing. Well, to match Mr Soros' left-wing activity I would like to propose the Koch brothers.
> 
> 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"
> 
> 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.
> 
> Tom