Astroturf

Koch Network Prepares Tea Party Mobilization After Santelli Rant

| Importance: 9/10

Following Rick Santelli’s CNBC rant criticizing Obama’s mortgage bailout, the Koch brothers’ network immediately mobilized to create the Tea Party movement. Within hours, Americans for Prosperity registered TaxDayTeaParty.com, while other conservative organizations quickly …

Rick Santelli David Koch Charles Koch Eric Odom Americans for Prosperity +1 more koch-network astroturf tea-party political-manipulation americans-for-prosperity +1 more
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Wise Use Movement Founded as Industry-Funded Anti-Environmental Grassroots Campaign

| Importance: 8/10

In August 1988, Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb convened the Multiple Use Strategy Conference in Reno, Nevada, launching the “Wise Use” movement. The conference brought together 250 representatives from timber, mining, ranching, and oil interests to coordinate an industry-funded campaign …

Ron Arnold Alan Gottlieb Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise American Petroleum Institute National Mining Association +2 more environmental astroturf corporate-lobbying public-lands regulatory-capture +1 more
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National Association of Manufacturers Launches Unprecedented Multi-Million Dollar Anti-New Deal Propaganda Campaign

| Importance: 8/10

In 1935, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) under president Robert Lund launches what Business Week headlines as “The NAM Declares War” (December 14, 1935)—an unprecedented multi-million dollar propaganda campaign to discredit Roosevelt’s New Deal and promote …

National Association of Manufacturers Robert Lund Du Pont General Motors AT&T +3 more corporate-resistance propaganda new-deal institutional-capture media-manipulation +1 more
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American Liberty League Founded by Du Pont Family and Corporate Elite to Oppose New Deal

| Importance: 8/10

On August 22, 1934, the American Liberty League is announced in Washington, D.C., as a purportedly bipartisan organization to defend the U.S. Constitution against “radical” New Deal policies, with Jouett Shouse appointed as president. The League’s formation represents the first …

Irénée du Pont John Jacob Raskob Jouett Shouse Al Smith John W. Davis +4 more corporate-resistance new-deal propaganda institutional-capture think-tanks +2 more
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