Okay, we’re still working through all the information from readers about Americans for Prosperity and their astroturf offshoot, Social Security for All.
They’ve been assigned the task of mauling Rock the Vote because RTV has been an effective part of the coalition of groups trying to prevent the White House from phasing out Social Security.
To that end, AforP created yet another group called ‘Rock The Hypocrisy’ to attack Rock The Vote for being too partisan.
Now, when it comes to AforP, ‘partisan’ is quite a word of derogation.
Like I said, we’ll have more information for you tomorrow on this. But the best we can tell Americans for Prosperty is the political arm of Koch Industries (i.e., a front) which the Koch family uses to aid conservative causes in general and stuff the Bush White House wants done in particular. (Koch Industries is a big oil, chemical and mining mega-corporation.) Folks seem to go from Koch Industries Washington lobby shop to Americans for Prosperity or back and forth from the White House on a pretty regular basis. And when you look even closer you’ll see that they’re all also tied in with Citizens for a Sound Economy, another spawn of the Koch family, which was essentially the predecessor of AforP.
Take Wayne Gable, for instance. He is a member of the board of directors of Americans for Prosperity. He’s currently the managing director of Federal Affairs — i.e., the lobby shop — of Koch Industries, Inc.
Before that he was president of Citizens for a Sound Economy.
Nancy Mitchell Pfotenhauer is now the president of Americans for Prosperity. Before that she was the head of the lobby shop for Koch Industries. Before that she was executive vice president or Citizens for a Sound Economy.
Running AforP today must not take too much time because she’s also president of the Independent Women’s Forum. But it probably helps that both organizations are run out of the same office.
Look into the inner-workings of Citizens for a Sound Economy, Americans for Prosperity, the Independent Women’s Forum and you’ll see it’s pretty hard to see where one group starts and another stops. They just all seem to lead back to Koch Industries, run by the Koch brothers.
(Bonus Koch Trivia: The father of the Koch borthers, Fred Koch, was a founder of the John Birch Society.)
As you might have expected with this new phoney-baloney Social Security group, it’s one more astroturf group set up by a major corporation with close ties to the White House, spinning off more and more bogus groups to game overworked reporters into thinking they represent actual constituencies.
That, and to keep Dick Armey on the payroll for his ‘consulting’ services.
(ed.note: Research by Kate Cambor.)
