More on Patients United Now - Their Corporate Funders
Posted on May 27th, 2009 by Jason Rosenbaum in Profits Before People
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I just love how all of these opposition groups to President Obama's health care plan front like they're real, grassroots organizations. AHIP's Campaign for an American Solution? Fake! Rick Scott's Conservatives for Patients' Rights? Funded with his ill-gotten gains. And now there's Patients United Now.
As I noted yesterday, Patients United Now (or PUN for short!), is a front group for Americans for Prosperity, a group behind the lobbyist-funded tea parties last month. Igor Volsky at Think Progress has put together some of the history of Americans for Prosperity. Even though on PUN's website they claim that they are "people just like you," they are actually just corporate-funded lobbyists:
After orchestrating and funding the so-called Tea Parties movement, Americans for Prosperity — a nationwide front group founded and funded by the right-wing polluter Koch Industries — is launching an ad campaign characterizing President Obama’s effort to reform the health care system as a government take-over that will ration care and care and deny treatments.
Americans for Prosperity is notorious for its fake grassroots efforts, funneling millions of dollars into conservative campaigns designed to undermine Democratic initiatives. As Lee Fang put it, “AFP is a professional AstroTurf machine”:
- Hosted ‘Drill Baby, Drill’ rallies around the country.
- Financed Joe the Plumber’s tour against the Employees’ Free Choice Act and other anti-EFCA rallies.
- Started NoStimulus.com, “a grassroots website that we hope will be a focal point for the widespread frustration ordinary Americans feel at the runaway government growth that we see during good economic times and bad.”
Now we've got Joe the Plumber's backers against health care - oh noes!
I guess these groups have no choice but to astroturf. It's not popular right now to represent these groups' real constituencies - corporations. So they have to front like real people are behind them. They're not, of course. As Media Matters Action Network points out in their point-by-point factcheck of PUN's ad, health care reform is seen as a necessity by Americans, and they want the plan Obama is proposing.
So, good luck with the astroturf, PUN, you're going to need it!
I know the people at afp…this is truly a grass roots effort if ever I saw one….300,000+ members in 29+ state chapters that have focused on peeling back excessive taxes such as you folks continue to somehow seem can be sustained….