Rent-a-Baggers Hit DC

Randolph Bragg, an actor from Northern Virginia, holds a sign as part of a paid stunt done by a group calling itself Defeat the Debt
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Well, not Tea-baggers/Tea-Partiers maybe. But cut from the same Tea Party cloth. On Tuesday we got an email from TPM Reader CH telling us there were a bunch of anti-tax protestors around town wearing Uncle Sam suits ‘begging’ and holding a sign saying “$12 trillion in debt … Please Help.”

It struck CH as a little off since the Sam she saw had set up next to an apparently genuine homeless person begging for food. But it turns out they weren’t protestors exactly. They were actors paid by a right-wing outfit called the Employment Policies Institute. One Sam our reporter spoke to said he’d been hired by PR agency on EPI’s behalf.

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