We all saw real grassroots movement in action last week in the progressive reaction to support Congressional members who pledged to fight for the public option. George Soros didn’t manufacture it. Michael Moore didn’t create it, ACORN didn’t fund it, nor did a bunch of rich Hollywood Liberals. Led by Jane Hamsher, nyceve and the folks at at Firedoglake, real people led the fight to keep Democrats focused on providing real health care reform, not watered down, corporate protectionism for the monopolistic practices of health insurance companies.
Unfortunately, that’s not the way Republicans and conservatives generate “grass root” support” for their positions. Here’s a good example of what I mean: fake letters generated by a lobbying form in opposition to the energy bill which can only be called fraud and identity theft to create the illusion of grass roots opposition to the climate change provisions of the bill:
Congressional investigators have uncovered five more letters sent to members of Congress that falsely claimed to be from charities expressing opposition to climate change legislation.
The new letters bring to nine the number of nonprofit organizations whose identities were appropriated by Bonner & Associates, a Washington lobbying firm that says it specializes in developing grass-roots support for lobbying campaigns. […]
The committee has asked Bonner and its client, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, to go through a total of 58 letters about the climate change legislation that appear to have been sent by charities to three members of Congress — Ms. Dahlkemper; Representative Christopher Carney, Democrat of Pennsylvania; and Representative Tom Perriello, Democrat of Virginia.
That request came after Bonner’s lawyers at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld told investigators that a letter from Senior Center Inc. of Charlottesville, Va., was legitimate — only to retract that determination several days later and declare that letter fake, a spokesman for the committee said.
Fear and Lies. That’s what the corporate business interests are trying to sell Congress and the public. On everything from health care reform to climate change to needed reforms and regulation of the financial industry. They have no alternatives. No proposals to address the myriad problems facing this country. But they do have profits to defend and money to spend on lobbyists and corporately financed astroturf organizations, and if using fake grass roots movements, phony letters and outrageous lies to scare Congress into opposing the progressive agenda we elected Democrats to put in place are their only options to achieve those ends, than by hook or crook they’ll do so.