Reclaim the Cyber-Commons: The internet is being captured by

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Reclaim the Cyber-Commons: The internet is being captured by

Postby admin » Tue Jan 26, 2016 4:17 am

Reclaim the Cyber-Commons: The internet is being captured by organised trolls. It’s time we fought back.
By George Monbiot
published in the Guardian, 14th December 2010

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They are the online equivalent of enclosure riots: the rick-burning, fence-toppling protests by English peasants losing their rights to the land. When MasterCard, Visa, Paypal and Amazon tried to shut WikiLeaks out of the cyber-commons, an army of hackers responded by trying to smash their way into these great estates and pull down their fences.

In the Wikileaks punch-up the commoners appear to have the upper hand. But it’s just one battle. There’s a wider cyberwar being fought, of which you hear much less. And in most cases the landlords, with the help of a mercenary army, are winning.

I’m not talking here about threats to net neutrality and the danger of a two-tier internet developing(1,2), though these are real. I’m talking about the daily attempts to control and influence content in the interests of the state and corporations: attempts in which money talks.

The weapon used by both state and corporate players is a technique known as astroturfing. An astroturf campaign is one that mimics spontaneous grassroots mobilisations, but which has in reality been organised. Anyone writing a comment piece in Mandarin critical of the Chinese government, for example, is likely to be bombarded with abuse by people purporting to be ordinary citizens, upset by the slurs against their country.

But many of them aren’t upset: they are members of the 50 Cent Party, so-called because one Chinese government agency pays 5 mao (half a yuan) for every post its tame commenters write(3). Teams of these sock-puppets are hired by party leaders to drown out critical voices and derail intelligent debates.

I first came across online astroturfing in 2002, when the investigators Andy Rowell and Jonathan Matthews looked into a series of comments made by two people calling themselves Mary Murphy and Andura Smetacek(4,5). They had launched ferocious attacks, across several internet forums, against a scientist whose research suggested that Mexican corn had been widely contaminated by GM pollen.

Rowell and Matthews found that one of the messages Mary Murphy had sent came from a domain owned by the Bivings Group, a PR company specialising in internet lobbying. An article on the Bivings website explained that “there are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organization is directly involved … Message boards, chat rooms, and listservs are a great way to anonymously monitor what is being said. Once you are plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to these outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third party.”(6)

The Bivings site also quoted a senior executive from the biotech corporation Monsanto, thanking the PR firm for its “outstanding work”(7). When a Bivings executive was challenged by Newsnight, he admitted that the “Mary Murphy” email was sent by someone “working for Bivings” or “clients using our services”(8). Rowell and Matthews then discovered that the IP address on Andura Smetacek’s messages was assigned to Monsanto’s headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri(9). There’s a nice twist to this story. AstroTurf TM – real fake grass – was developed and patented by Monsanto.

Reading comment threads on the Guardian’s sites and elsewhere on the web, two patterns jump out at me. The first is that discussions of issues in which there’s little money at stake tend to be a lot more civilised than debates about issues where companies stand to lose or gain billions: such as climate change, public health and corporate tax avoidance. These are often characterised by amazing levels of abuse and disruption.

Articles about the environment are hit harder by such tactics than any others. I love debate, and I often wade into the threads beneath my columns. But it’s a depressing experience, as instead of contesting the issues I raise, many of those who disagree bombard me with infantile abuse, or just keep repeating a fiction, however often you discredit it. This ensures that an intelligent discussion is almost impossible – which appears to be the point(10).

The second pattern is the strong association between this tactic and a certain set of views: pro-corporate, anti-tax, anti-regulation. Both traditional conservatives and traditional progressives tend be more willing to discuss an issue than these right-wing libertarians, many of whom seek instead to shut down debate.

So what’s going on? I’m not suggesting that most of the people trying to derail these discussions are paid to do so, though I would be surprised if none were. I’m suggesting that some of the efforts to prevent intelligence from blooming seem to be organised, and that neither website hosts nor other commenters know how to respond.

For his film (Astro)Turf Wars, Taki Oldham secretly recorded a training session organised by a rightwing libertarian group called American Majority.



The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to “manipulate the medium”(11). This is what he told them:

“Here’s what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in “Liberal Books”. I go through and I say “one star, one star, one star”. The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars. … This is where your kids get information: Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster. These are places where you can rate movies. So when you type in “Movies on Healthcare”, I don’t want Michael Moore’s to come up, so I always give it bad ratings. I spend about 30 minutes a day, just click, click, click, click. … If there’s a place to comment, a place to rate, a place to share information, you have to do it. That’s how you control the online dialogue and give our ideas a fighting chance.”

June 11, 2012 11:10 p.m.

Speech emerged from our need to articulate grievances. At some point, yelling and pushing was no longer enough, and smacking on the head with stones just hurt too damn much, and we had to find a way to talk about it. It began with grunts and growls. Or maybe pleas for mercy. Maybe the first time a voice kept a stone from breaking a head, that was speech. Yes, I think that would be.

But I can’t speak a word that will stop anonymous cybervandals from posting phony Amazon reviews panning my book, giving my girls shit on Twitter, trying to take down my websites, sending me hatemail, signing me up for free email offers, ordering me pizza, sending me bags of poop, certificates of jerkdom, and really, the kindest one, a free package of Attends. It’s at times like these that having a deep understanding of the universe and an abiding trust in the universe’s merciful nature comes in really handy.

But eventually, sanctity wears thin and you start to seethe.

-- The Real Diary of Charles Carreon, by Charles Carreon

Over 75% of the funding for American Majority, which hosted this training session, comes from the Sam Adams Alliance(12). In 2008, the year in which American Majority was founded, 88% of the alliance’s money came from a single donation, of $3.7m(13). A group which trains rightwing libertarians to distort online democratic processes, in other words, was set up with funding from a person or company with a very large wallet.

The internet is a remarkable gift, which has granted us one of the greatest democratic opportunities since universal suffrage. We’re in danger of losing this global commons as it comes under assault from an army of trolls and flacks, many of them covertly organised or trained. The question for all of us – the Guardian, other websites, everyone who benefits from this resource – is what we intend to do about it. It’s time we fought back and reclaimed the internet for what it does best: exploring issues, testing ideas, opening the debate.

http://www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pd ... NTCMP=SRCH

2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10961776

3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-p ... 783640.stm

4. http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Andura_Smetacek

5. http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Mary_Murphy

6. Andrew Dimock, head of the Bivings Groups Online Marketing and Promotions division, 1st April 2002. “Viral Marketing: How to Infect the World”.

The original article was here:
http://www.thebivingsreport.com/search_ ... icle_id=73

But has since been taken down. Subsequently a note says that it has been “Recently edited for clarification”: which appears to mean saying the exact opposite of what the original stated, and re-posted here:

http://www.bivingsreport.com/2002/viral ... the-world/

You can read extracts from the original version here:

http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=166

7. See http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Bivings_Group

(The original has also been taken down).

8. Newsnight, 7th June 2002.

9. http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Andura_Smetacek

10. See also the interesting comment by SteB1, here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/de ... nt-8653581

11. http://astroturfwars.org/

12. Scott K Parks, 5th October 2009. American Majority holds Dallas workshop. The Dallas Morning News.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... a21b6.html

13. Karoli, 26th April 2010. American Majority: Part the astroturf to see what’s underneath. http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/americ ... -see-whats
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Re: Reclaim the Cyber-Commons: The internet is being capture

Postby admin » Tue Jan 26, 2016 9:14 am

Andura Smetacek
by Public Interest Investigations Powerbase
1/26/16

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Andura Smetacek is an apparently fake identity used to undermine critics of GM foods. Her postings featured on the email list AgBioView edited by C S Prakash and some of them originated on servers inside the Missouri HQ of Monsanto.

On 5 October 2001 Prof Anthony Trewavas FRS was named in the High Court in London as the source of a letter at the centre of a libel case involving Peter Melchett, Greenpeace and the Glasgow Herald. [1]

According to an agreed apology published by the Herald on the 6th October:

'On 3 November 2000 the Herald published a letter it had received from Anthony Trewavas, Professor in Plant Biochemistry at the University of Edinburgh. The letter alleged that Greenpeace campaigns had deliberately spread unfounded fears about GM Foods, so as to further the financial interests of Lord Melchett and Greenpeace, that Greenpeace accepted donations from companies and had inappropriate links with commercial organisations. The Herald acknowledges that there is no foundation in any of these allegations.'


When the letter was originally published in the Herald, it was widely publicised by way of the Internet, e.g. on Monsanto's Knowledge Centre website.[2]

In response to a critical comment following the case, Prof Trewavas repeatedly denied being the original author of the libel letter. He claimed, 'The letter in question was posted on agbioview and was written by a lady in London.' (Reply by Prof Trewavas) In correspondence with the Ecologist Prof Trewavas further identified the author as an Andura Smetacek.

An andura_smetacek@yahoo.com posted around 40 different items to the AgBioView e-mail list, which is edited by CS Prakash as part of his AgBioWorld campaign. Smetacek's postings were often displayed prominently on the AgBioView list and were at times enthusiastically received:

Andura
...In sum, I have one word for your comments - MAGNIFICENT! Keep on posting your comments.
Cheers
Tom DeGregori
(Archive: Message #689, Date: August 8, 2000)


The libel letter was not the only controversy triggered by Smetacek. In Autumn 2001 AgBioView prominently circulated emails from Smetacek and a 'Mary Murphy' attacking Dr Ignacio Chapela, a researcher at UC Berkeley and co-author of an article on Mexican maize contamination in the journal Nature. Smetacek posted extensive detail on Chapela's supposedly incriminating associations - associations which Smetacek claimed showed Chapela was 'first and foremost an activist' not a scientist.

According to Smetacek, research into Chapela's background showed his willingness to collude with 'fear-mongering activists' to attack 'biotechnology, free-trade, intellectual property rights and other, politically motivated agenda items.' Chapela's research needed to be understood in the light of this collusion, Smetacek implied, and he should be challenged as to just how far in advance he had begun to 'coordinate the release of his "report" with these fear-mongering activists? Or more likely, did he start earlier and work with them to design his research for this effect?'

A string of links followed to items intended to show Chapela had engaged in such incriminating activities as criticising the commercial relationship between UC Berkeley and biotech giant Novartis, or supporting a statement by scientists calling for a moratorium on GM crops. (Ignatio Chapela -- activists FIRST, scientist second, 29 Nov 2001) Smetacek failed to mention, however, that Chapela was well-regarded enough to have recently served on a committee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences studying the environmental impact of GM crops.

The next AgBioView bulletin (Fri, 30 Nov 2001) had as its lead item a response to Smetacek's piece in which a subscriber called on scientists to use the media to expose Chapela's dubious links.In the next Agbioview bulletin that day, Dr Julian Kinderlerer took issue with the kind of attacks being made on the Berkeley researchers:

'I am really concerned at the personal attacks that some choose to use in relation to a piece of research. ...To attack a piece of work by attacking the integrity of the workers is a tactic not usually used by scientists.'[3]


CS Prakash had arranged for a response to this from Smetacek to go out immediately below Dr Kinderlerer's comments. Smetacek appears to concede that Kinderlerer has a valid point but then proceeds to make a series of further attacks on Chapela, concluding,

'How much money does Chapela take in speaking fees, travel reimbursements and other donations from this [anti-biotech] industry for his help in misleading fear-based marketing campaigns?'[4]


This e-mail contained Smetacek's only serious attempt to corroborate the claim, made in 'her' original attack, of some sort of collusion between the Berkeley researchers and the 'fear-mongering activists'. Smetacek quoted from a newsletter from 'The Campaign' which stated:

'In early October, we reported that native corn was testing positive for genetically engineered DNA in an area in Mexico where biotech corn has not been permitted to be grown.' The implication, given that Quist and Chapela's research wasn't published until the end of November, was that this could only have been known about in early October through some sort of 'collusion' with the researchers. In reality, however, Nature had run a piece headlined 'Transgenic corn found growing in Mexico' back in September (Nature 413; 337).

Smetacek's attacks appear to have been part of a carefully coordinated attack designed to get inflammatory material rapidly and anonymously into circulation in the scientific community with a view to producing exactly the kind of acrimony and controversy that duly followed.[5]

Smetacek's other main line of attack on biotech industry critics in her postings to AgBioView was to accuse them of engaging in violence. In many of 'her' posts Smetacek implied that apparently mainstream environmental organisations, like the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), were associated with 'violence' or 'terrorism'. Smetacek's earliest messages to AgBioView particularly promote the CFFAR.org website and encourage readers to support an e-mail campaign based at that website aimed at those funding the 'terrorists' and encouraging them to withdraw their funding.

The CFFAR website was registered to an employee of Monsanto's Internet PR company Bivings. Smetacek's attacks were often posted in tandem with those of a 'Mary Murphy' . Murphy's postings have been tracked back to Bivings.

The e-mail headers of Andura Smetacek are still more startling. Although in her earliest emails, Smetacek presented herself to the AgBioView list as a concerned observer of the GM debate writing from London, the Internet Protocol address on those messages is 199.89.234.124 - numbers assigned to Monsanto's headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. At the time in question Jay Byrne was Monsanto's chief Internet strategist.

Although the majority of Smetacek's material was posted on AgBioView, there are a couple of exceptions. One was a posting on Foodsecurity.net and the other an online petition set up by Smetacek. Even here, though, the petition is attributed to CS Prakash's AgBioWorld.

_______________

Notes

1. Greenpeace wins damages over professor's 'unfounded' allegations, Education Guardian, Monday October 8, 2001
2. http://www.monsanto.co.uk/news/2000/nov ... erald.html
3. RE: AGBIOVIEW: Chapela and Mexican corn, 30 Nov 2001
4. More evidence that Chapela was coordinating with activists, 30 Nov 2001
5. http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=19&page=1&op=2
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Re: Reclaim the Cyber-Commons: The internet is being capture

Postby admin » Tue Jan 26, 2016 9:23 am

Mary Murphy
by Public Interest Investigations Powerbase
1/26/16

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In an article about the Mexican maize controversy, the journal Science described how 'widely circulating anonymous e-mails' had accused researchers at UC Berkeley of 'conflicts of interest and other misdeeds'. Those e-mails surfaced first on AgBioView - the listserve of AgBioWorld - which prominently circulated emails from a 'Mary Murphy' and an 'Andura Smetacek' that claimed the researchers were primarily activists, not scientists. Murphy and Smetacek's inflammatory attacks initiated and fueled a powerful campaign of denigration of the researchers and pressure on the journal Nature to retract their paper.

In July 2000 a Mary Murphy posted a fake Associated Press article on the message board of foxbghsuit.com, a website dedicated to a legal case connected to Monsanto's genetically engineered cattle drug rBGH.
The Hotmail reply address given matches that of the attacker of the Berkeley researchers - mmrph@hotmail.com; however, other identifying details are shown in brackets on the site:

Posted by Mary Murphy (bw6.bivwood.com)
ACTIVISTS CHANGE STANCE ON GMOs AFTER SCIENTISTS GENETICALLY ALTER MARIJUANA (AP)
June 9, 2000


This is not the only evidence as to Murphy's true identity. After making a passing defence of DDT on the AgBioView listserv, Murphy was drawn into correspondence off-list with another subscriber. The technical headers on these e-mails also show Murphy's mails as originating from bw6.bivwood.com - the domain name of The Bivings Group, an internet PR company that, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune, 'has developed "Internet advocacy" campaigns for corporate America since 1996'. The article notes, 'biotechnology giant Monsanto' is 'among the Bivings clients who have discovered how to make the Internet work for them.' The technical headers of a number of Andura Smetacek e-mails show the Internet Protocol address 199.89.234.124 - numbers assigned to Monsanto's headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri.

Between April and May 2002, the British publications The Big Issue, The Ecologist and The Guardian published a series of articles alleging that AgBioView was used as part of a corporate smear campaign against the researchers by Bivings. In a letter published in The Guardian on Wednesday 12 June 2002, Gary Bivings, the President of The Bivings Group, states that, 'The allegations made against the Bivings Group in two recent columns (The fake persuaders, May 14, and Corporate phantoms , May 29) are completely untrue.' Gary Bivings goes on to claim that, 'the Bivings Group has no knowledge of either Mary Murphy or Andura Smetacek'.

However, before Gary Bivings' letter of denial had even been published, Bivings' head of online PR, Todd Zeigler, had confided to the BBC that one of the e-mails in question was sent by someone 'working for Bivings' or 'clients using our services'. The admission, made to BBC TV's news and current affairs programme, Newsnight, was included in their report on the Mexican maize scandal broadcast on 7th June 2002 (see the programme transcript).

The way in which the attacks on the Berkeley researchers was initiated and directed also needs to be understood in the context of a much longer-running internet-based PR campaign aimed at destroying the reputation of anyone seen as adversely affecting the interests of the biotechnology industry. Smetacek and Murphy between them posted 60 or more pieces that CS Prakash published, often prominently, on the AgBioView list. Murphy also posted material onto other lists and message boards. Murphy also appears to have lobbied organisations critical of GM crops to change their stance, to judge by a letter published in July 2000 by the American Chiropractic Association. In it Murphy tells the ACA: 'Your press release about the dangers of GM food is so ridiculous that I don't even know where to begin. How can you pass on such rubbish and at the same time expect to be taken seriously as scientists/ medical practitioners? ... over 2,000 scientists have signed a petition supporting the safety and benefits of GM crops (see http://www.agbioworld.org). If you want to be taken seriously, you should not make ridiculous claims and you should show respect for the scientists who are developing this important technology.'

Murphy's attacks, like Smetacek's, were often vitriolic. This is Murphy to AgBioView on the Indian physicist and environmentalist, Dr Vandana Shiva:

Date: 8 Nov 2001 12:24:03 -0000
From: Mary Murphy <mmrph@hotmail.com>
Subject: Liar, Liar [excerpt]
Vandana Shiva's done it again. Lying about technology and lying about Monsanto to foment more violence and unrest in India.


Murphy, like Smetacek, also targets support for organic agriculture: 'Organic agriculture is lower yielding and thus more expensive; it uses dangerous chemicals... and it offers no extra nutritional benefits. However, since fools are free to do whatever they want with their money, I have never had a problem with people who buy organic food.' (EU green group urges tax breaks for organic foods, Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 11:20:44-0500)
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Re: Reclaim the Cyber-Commons: The internet is being capture

Postby admin » Tue Jan 26, 2016 9:33 am

Cancún climate talks in danger of collapse over Kyoto continuation
by John Vidal, environment editor
December 3, 2010
Comments

SteB1
5 Dec 2010 3:16

@ScepticMike

I was very suspicious of the idea that people are being paid to write" denialist "nonsense on these pages but "OceaninMotion" has raised doubts in my mind.


A ten-hour working day, being paid by the word, would seem to be a possible explanation for the tidal wave of standard lies, misunderstanding and complete ignorance that he has just produced over the past few hours.

Yes I tend to discount conspiracies or the worst options without a lot of evidence. However, my experience with some of these contrarians causes me to question whether these are really joe public off the street types doing it because they care strongly about the issue. Firstly, I don't know of many enthusiastic people that would spend 10 hours or more a day posting lie, after lie - lies that get repeatedly exposed. The other week, one of them pursued me for over 12 hours, from the afternoon to 4:30am in the morning. They tried one intellectual trick after another to catch me out and try and get something on me. Initially it seemed it was a typical uninformed bloke off the street making uninformed comments. However, as it progressed I realised I was arguing with a professional who had a background in the arts, philosophy, economics etc.

I also see very strong evidence that these troll attacks are coordinated. When one of these environmental articles is posted the so called contrarians descend on it en masse, no matter what time of the day the article is posted. There are ridiculous amounts of recommendations given to any contrarian comment, no matter how short, if it is complete drivel, and even if the claim is shown to be completely untrue. The deliberate attempt is to hoodwink the public into believing that contrarians are a mass joe public movement, when in reality they appear to be a very noisy minority. At the very least there is a forum or social networking site that these trolls are using to coordinate their attacks.

There appears to be little doubt in my mind that this is a coordinated and orchestrated viral propaganda campaign. The clear attempt is to repeat the same lie over and over, and to drown out all the informed commenters by sheer force of numbers. The attempt is clear, and that is to litter all environmental reporting with a mass of lies and distortions in the hope that it will mislead a few more of the public. I have been arguing that the natural world matters since I was very young and before any of these issues became popular. I have nearly 40 years experience of the type of argument people put up. What is new is that these people carry on after you repeatedly expose them for not knowing what they are talking about, and having made false statements. They don't care, you are arguing with people that have no intellectual integrity at all. This is very unusual. Normally when someone is personally motivated to argue something, they naturally care about the subject. But these people do not give a damn about being right or not. So what motivates someone to post one inaccurate claim after another, and to not care about repeatedly being exposed for using intellectual dishonesty?

As for myself, I am temporarily housebound, I have cared passionately about the natural world since I was a young child, and certainly no one is paying me to do it.
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Re: Reclaim the Cyber-Commons: The internet is being capture

Postby admin » Tue Jan 26, 2016 9:40 am

American Majority: Part The Astroturf To See What's Underneath
By Karoli Kuns
4/26/10

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What do you do when you live in Kansas, are the twin sons of disgraced Kansas Congressman Jim Ryun and you have access to a whole lot of money? What else? Start a non-profit organization to raise up a 'grassroots army'.

Meet American Majority, the newest right wing non-profit on the block. If you actually click that link you'll get a big overlay asking "Do you want your country back?" American Majority was born in 2008 (keep that date in mind), and its stated purpose is as follows:

American Majority, Inc.s' purpose is to create a national political training institute dedicated to recruiting, identifying, training and mentoring potential political leaders. More particularly, the organization is a non-partisan political training institute whose mission is to train and equip a national network of leadership committed to individual freedom through limited government and the free market. Advocating true federalism, toward that end, the organization intends to build a national network of leaders and grassroots advocates who aspire to increase freedom for individuals and freedom and in the marketplace.


One weakness in their training materials has already emerged, as their Kansas field director evidently interpreted freedom for individuals and freedom in the marketplace to mean freedom to inject the Tea Party into a pitch for Google fiber.

One passes through their site and any thinking human being knows it's about as libertarian as my left foot. It's a Republican agitation arm disguised with some plasticky-looking grass on it. Before their first Texas training session in 2009, Drew Ryun sat down for an interview with the Dallas News. I appreciate his candor, and you will too.

A month after President Barack Obama took office in January, Drew Ryun moved to Texas and began organizing the state office of American Majority.


That would have been around what? February 2009? What took so long?

According to American Majority's 990 filing for 2008, they'd conducted 9 training sessions in Kansas, 4 in Louisiana, 4 in Minnesota, and 6 in Oklahoma by December 31, 2008. It doesn't take a math genius to figure out they were around before Barack Obama was elected in November, 2008. And if they were around before the general election, who were they training and for what purpose? And...who is funding them?

It's that last question that piqued my curiosity. Drew Ryun helps to answer the first part of it in the Dallas News article:

Ryun estimates that "above 75 percent" of American Majority's funding comes from the Sam Adams Alliance, a conservative think tank in Chicago. In return for their tax-exempt status, American Majority and the Sam Adams Alliance are required to make their income tax returns available to the public.


Who is the Sam Adams Alliance?

You may recognize the name if you've visited any Tea Party sites. Their logo usually rests alongside those of FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and other Republican sponsors.

Here are some facts about the Sam Adams Alliance published late in 2009:

The president of Sam Adams Alliance is John Tsarpalas, former executive director of the Illinois State Republican party. Eric O'Keefe, SAA's chairman and CEO, is a former executive director of the National Libertarian Party. He once worked for Citizens for Congressional Reform (pdf), a project of David Koch's Citizens for a Sound Economy. Along with noted Libertarian financier Howard Rich, O'Keefe sits on the board of directors of Americans for Limited Government.

Shortly before online activist Eric Odom helped kick-start the Tea Party movement, he was new media director for Sam Adams Alliance. This put him in charge of (among other things) setting up websites, coordinating Facebook groups, managing Twitter accounts and other social networking tasks. Odom's first known acts as a Tea Partier were to set up the OfficialChicagoTeaParty.com site and Facebook pages within hours of Rick Santelli's February rant, then spreading word through Twitter, initially utilizing #TCOT, a Twitter list and hashtag for Top Conservatives on Twitter.


Since their last tax filing in November 2009, they've added a new director. His name is Denis Calabrese. From his bio page:

Denis served as Washington D.C. Chief-of-Staff for the now retired Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Richard Armey.


In the world of non-profits, large donors like to be on the board to oversee the donation they've given. In the past, the Sam Adams Alliance hasn't been a major player. In 2006 direct public support was $401,500. 2007 gifts and grants appear to be 1,822,458, but there are some discrepancies from one year to the next.

But in 2008, donations increased by a factor of ten. Total gifts and grants were $4,222,604. Denis Calabrese joins the board, and coincidentally happens to be Dick Armey's former chief of staff, and donations bloom into full-throated support for offshoots like America's Majority? Ah, the smell of astroturf in the spring.

Of the $4.2 million, $3.7 million was an "unusual grant".

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Ordinarily, funds passing from one non-profit to another are listed on the donor's tax disclosures as a grant or gift. Unfortunately, in this case the identity of the donor is unknown, because the Sam Adams Alliance believes in free speech rights and intentionally conceals the identity of their donors. Why are they ashamed to admit who their donors are? What's bad about promoting liberty, small government, American values?

The leadership at Sam Adams thinks it's perfectly okay to conceal the donors of four million tax-deductible dollars. That would be four million tax deductible dollars you and I have to suck up the tab on while they sally forth into tea-party land stirring up the angry hordes and passing millions through tax-exempt entities to other tax-exempt entities in the name of distinctly Republican politics and agitation.

Of course, the Ryun boys couldn't really admit that, because by their own admission, it would jeopardize their tax-exempt status and wreck the whole pretty picture.

Who are these Ryuns anyway?

Ryun insists he is not working for Republicans – explicitly or implicitly. In fact, he believes his brand of conservatism often gets lost in the pragmatism and compromise of everyday Republican Party politics.

"Part of the fight we are having right now is more with the Republican side than with the Democrat side," he said.

American Majority is based in Purcellville, Va., about 40 miles northwest of Washington, D.C. Ned Ryun, Drew Ryun's twin brother, is national director of the organization.


The Ryuns have their own brand of Republican pedigree:

Jim Ryun, their father, was a famous Olympic runner in the 1960s who went on to become a conservative Republican congressman from Kansas. The family has a long history with the Republican Party. Drew Ryun, now a 36-year-old father of two, worked for the Republican National Committee as deputy director of grassroots in 2004. Ned Ryun was a writer for George W. Bush.


Jim Ryun had his own set of ethical challenges in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal. You can read about his acquisition of a Washington, DC townhouse from a Jack Abramoff-funded nonprofit at Talking Points Memo (great collection there), and more about his dealings with Dennis Hastert, Mark Foley, and notable Republican PAC donors here.

Since the Citizens United decision specifically allows corporations to spend as much as they want, but still maintained disclosure as part of the deal, I wonder if the IRS will request additional information on the source of the funding bonanza to the Sam Adams Alliance. I also wonder if Dick Armey and his minions should be trusted with that kind of money, given their own dicey ties to Abramoff and his racket.

I think Matt Angle had it right when the Dallas News asked for his opinion of American Majority:

"What the Republicans are trying to do is put some political organization behind the mean wing of their party..."


Updates:

Oh, now Erick Erickson is getting into the act. Here's his announcement about training camps.

Also of interest: Rachel Maddow's report in 2009 about astroturf groups mentioning this one.
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