But taxseason 2010 will have one new element: the appearance of the Tea Party ExpressII, a bus-load of anti-government protesters crisscrossing the country tospread their message.
The TeaParty Express famously began its tour in Searchlight, Nev., where FOX News pundit Sarah Palin eggedon the crowd in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hometown.
As we go topress, the Tea Party Express is planning a stop at State Fair Park onWednesday, April 7, sponsored by Our Country Deserves Better Political ActionCommittee (PAC) and the corporate-financed Wisconsin chapter of Americans forProsperity (AFP). The bus will also visit rallies in Madison, Eau Claire andGreen Bay before heading toward Washington, D.C., on April 15. The statechapter of AFP will hold a tax day tea party on the Capitol steps, as usual, todenounce government spending.
What’sIt All About?
While thenational media have highlighted Sarah Palin’s star turn at Tea Party ralliesand corporate links to the events, Mark Block, the director of the Wisconsinchapter of Americans for Prosperity, said the Tea Party movement is aleader-less grassroots group made up of average citizens who want to getinvolved in politics.
“The teaparty movement is an outgrowth of the government moving too fast, too quick,both at the state and national levels,” Block told the Shepherd.
ButAFP-Wisconsin was launched in 2007, long before anyone had heard of massivebank bailouts or “ObamaCare” or wacky conspiracy theories about a foreign-bornsocialist president.
Back then,AFP-Wisconsin was advocating for a taxpayers’ bill of rights, which would haveseverely limited the state’s ability to raise taxes to pay for core servicessuch as public education and law enforcement, as well as inevitable budgetaryincreasesfor energy or health care costs, for example.
SincePresident Obama’s election, AFP-Wisconsin has held a number of anti-taxrallies, where politicians such as Congressman Paul Ryan, gubernatorialcandidate Scott Walker, multimillionaire U.S. Senate candidate Terrence Walland conservative radio talkers show up to denounce government spending (usuallywhile standing on publicly owned land).
But Blocksaid the number of tea party attendees and members proves that the movement isgrassroots, “not Astroturf,” or the creation of corporate PR experts andlobbyists who are manipulating voters to help them stymie reform.
“The morecitizens that get involved in the political process, the better,” Block said.
DeepPockets and Denial
But is AFPtruly a grassroots phenomenon?
While manylocal rally-goers will no doubt be sincerely concerned about governmentspending and taxes, both of the event’s organizers are well-funded nationalgroups with impressive connections throughout the conservative movement.
Our CountryDeserves Better has organized campaigns against health care reform and insupport of new Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown. The PAC spent $347,670 on adssupporting Brown’s recent candidacy.
But that’schump change compared to what Americans for Prosperity has spent on its PRcampaigns.
AFP is fundedby the owners of the second largest privately held corporation in thecountrythe Wichita, Kan.-based Koch Industries Inc., an oil conglomerate withbusiness interests throughout North America, including Wisconsin.
In additionto being an astute businessman, Koch Industries’ founder, Fred Koch, also heldstrong political beliefs. In fact, Fred was a founding member of the radicallyconservative John Birch Society in the 1950s. The group, although lessprominent than in its 1960s heyday, is headquartered in Appleton, Wis., andremains a strong supporter of limited government and Christian principles.
Two ofFred’s four sons, Charles and David, have expanded their father’s businessempirefor example, the company bought Georgia-Pacific Corp. for $13 billion in2005, and the Lycra and Stainmaster brands from DuPont Corp. for $4.2 billionin 2004.
In 2008, thecompany’s annual sales totaled $100 billion.
Charles andDavid are each worth $16 billionwealthier than the founders of Google ($15.3billion each) and financier George Soros ($13 billion), but not as rich as NewYork Mayor Michael Bloomberg ($17.5 billion) or Bill Gates ($50 billion),currently the richest man in America.
That’s whytea party critics like Scot Ross, executive director of the progressivewatchdog group One Wisconsin Now, said AFP’s real aim is to make the richricher and the middle class and low-income workers even worse off than they arenow.
“Americansfor Prosperity is a corporate-funded front group that is trying to extract as muchof our public dollars as they can and then put it in the hands of thecorporations that fund it,” Ross said. “They’re about reducing protections thatkeep our air fit to breathe and our water fit to drink and our food fit toeat.”
ButAFP-Wisconsin’s Block says that the state chapter receives little financialsupport from the national organizationjust administrative, legal and marketinghelpwhile his salary and other expenses are paid for by locally raised funds.
“I havenever once been told that we needed to take a position because of what the Kochfamily wanted,” Block said.
ClimateChange Denial
Yet AFP’sadvocacy and the Koch family’s business interests dovetail nicely. In fact, theBig Oil-backed AFP is behind much of the climate change-denying spin thatpermeates the media.%uFFFD
According toa just-released study by Greenpeace USA, the Koch brothers’ foundations havespent an astounding $24.8 million between 2005 and 2008 onglobal-warming-denying opposition groups, such as the Mercatus Center ($9.2million), AFP ($5.2 million), the Heritage Foundation ($1.6 million) and theCato Institute ($1 million). What’s more, between 2006 and 2009, KochIndustries, its employees and relatives spent $37.9 million on direct lobbyingon oil and energy issues.
Morevisibly, AFP sponsored the $5 million Hot Air Tour to rally global warmingskeptics in advance of a vote on environmental legislation in Congress. It alsosupported last year’s highly charged town hall meetings on health care reform,a frenzy whipped up by FreedomWorks, led by former right-wing Republicancongressional leader Dick Armey, which grew out of the Koch-funded Citizens fora Sound Economy in 2003.
“Thecompany’s tightknit network of lobbyists, former executives and organizationshas created a forceful stream of misinformation that Koch-funded entitiesproduce and disseminate,” the Greenpeace report states. “This campaignpropaganda is then replicated, repackaged and echoed many times throughout theKoch-funded web of political front groups and think tanks.”
For example,Greenpeace reports that at least 20 Koch-funded entities were involved inhyping the “climate gate” story, in which the e-mails of a climate scientist atEast Anglia University were hacked into and then exposed just before the climatesummit in Copenhagen.
But despitethe Koch-backed claims that the e-mails showed that global warming was a mythspun by biased researchers, the professor in question was cleared last week bya British House of Commons committee investigating the matter.
“We havefound no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientificconsensus that global warming is happening and is induced by human activity,”the report on the inquiry concluded.
%uFFFDLobbyingAgainst the Clean Energy Jobs Bill
Closer tohome, AFP, Koch Companies Public Sector and the Wisconsin Paper Council (theKoch-owned Georgia-Pacific is a member) are lobbying against the proposed CleanEnergy Jobs Act, which aims to reduce Wisconsin’s dependence on fossil fuels,such as oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, while boostingWisconsin-generated sources of renewable energy.
Turns outthat Koch Industries owns Flint Hills Resources’ Pine Bend Refinery, south ofthe Twin Cities, which refines oil from Canada’s tar sands, as well as apipeline throughout Wisconsin. According to a series of excellent La Crosse Tribune articles published inMarch, Pine Bend produces up to 40% of Wisconsin’s transportation fuel, mostlyfor the western part of the state.
But thatCanadian oil may not meet the low-carbon fuel standards included in theproposed clean-energy legislation.
Soconservative legislators (mostly Republican, but also Sen. Jeff Plale, aDemocrat from South Milwaukee, who opposes the bill’s low-carbon standard) havebeen fighting for Canadian oil instead of advocating for Wisconsin-basedrenewable energy sources.
For example,in February, state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) warned in a press releasethat the “Global warming bill could shut off a major source of Wisconsin’senergy” and that “serious thought [should] be given to legislation that coulddo harm to the benefits Wisconsin receives from Canadian energy.”
Likewise,the Koch-owned Georgia-Pacific, which has facilities scattered throughoutnorthern Wisconsin, is a member of the Wisconsin Paper Council, which alsoopposes the bill.
AFP’sBlockwho, according to the state Government Accountability Board Web site, hasregistered as a lobbyist on the billsaid that the group focuses on theeconomic issues connected to global warming.
“We haveweighed in on the governor’s original Global Warming Task Force recommendationsand had urged our activists to let their legislators know that we thought itwas bad economic policy in Wisconsin,” Block said.
AFP alsopaid for recent robocalls urging opposition to the proposedKenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line.
“Economically,we don’t think the KRM is justifiable, the dollars that they want to spend onit to subsidize it,” Block said.
While Blockargues that AFP is a true grassroots organization, One Wisconsin Now’s ScotRoss sees AFP as doing the bidding of its corporate creators.
“It’s nocoincidence that profits from giant corporations are being pumped into frontgroups like AFP to further those corporate interests,” Ross said.
